A voice could still be heard from Beckett’s phone, but he hung up immediately.
“Who is it?” I asked.
“They do not know yet,” he answered. “Or they know and are not saying until they find the evidence.”
The police led Celestine out of the room. She was no longer shouting. She was only looking at Talia.
“I did it for you,” she told her.
Talia wiped away her tears.
“No. You decided instead of me what kind of person I should become.”
Celestine’s face tensed, but she had no answer anymore.
That same evening the hospital director brought all the documents. Beside him stood a lawyer whose eyes showed exhaustion.
“Mrs. Whitlock, we discovered that the permission to take the baby out had been certified with the administration’s old stamp,” he said. “The responsible employee, Laura Hayes, has been temporarily suspended.”
“Did she open my bracelet?” I asked.
“The cameras show that Celestine opened it. But Laura entered a false request into the system.”
Beckett stood up from his chair.
“How long had this been going on?”
The lawyer opened the folder.
“Almost four months.”
Four months.
At that moment I remembered all the strange calls Celestine had made during my pregnancy. Every question about the baby’s sex, name, and due date. I thought she was simply an overly meddling grandmother. In reality, she was turning my pregnancy into a plan for someone.
The next day the police arrested Laura Hayes in the hospital parking lot. In her bag she had a second stamp, two blank forms, and a card prepared in Gemma’s name.
Celestine asked for a lawyer. But when the lawyer heard the recording, he closed the folder after several minutes.
“I cannot defend you in this case,” he told her.
“I will pay you.”
“This is no longer about money. You recorded your own words yourself.”
For the first time Celestine heard the recording through someone else’s voice. On the screen her voice said: “The bracelet must be opened immediately after birth. Maren will not be able to resist.”
She covered her face with her hands.
“I did not say it like that.”
“You said exactly that,” Beckett replied.
There was no anger in his voice anymore. Only disappointment.
That night I was left alone in a small hospital room. Three cribs stood side by side. Gemma was breathing calmly, Lennox was moving her fingers, and Reni was pursing her lips even in sleep.
Callum’s notebook lay on the table. A small copper bird clip held its cover. One wing of the bird had a scratch because Callum had dropped it on the floor the day before.
For the first time I was no longer afraid in the room because of Celestine. But when we began returning home in the morning, I discovered that fear had another face.
The door of our house was open.
Beckett went ahead of me.
“Stay here.”
Inside, everything seemed to be in its place. Three beds. Three blankets. Three small bottles.
But in the children’s room I found one drawer open. Inside lay a copy of Gemma’s birth certificate and an additional label from the hospital bracelet.
Someone had already looked through everything.
The police examined the house that same day and installed cameras. It became clear that a relative of Celestine had a copy of the key. He had not entered the house that night, but the old habit was enough to make me no longer feel safe.
Three weeks later the first court hearing took place. I did not want to go there. The wound still hurt, and the nights seemed like staying awake with three children.
Talia took my hand.
“If you want, I will say everything in your place.”
“No,” I answered. “This is your mother. But I must have my own voice.”
In the courtroom Celestine looked small. She no longer had the confident expression with which she had entered the hospital.
The judge heard the evidence: the forged consent, the messages, the video recording, the hospital cameras, and Laura Hayes’s admission that she had entered a false request into the system in exchange for money.
Celestine pleaded guilty to attempting the illegal transfer of a child, document forgery, and conspiracy. Laura was also sentenced to imprisonment and was permanently prohibited from working at the hospital.
I did not feel revenge.
Only exhaustion.
After the hearing Talia came to me.
“I do not know how to return what my mother made you lose.”
“You cannot return it,” I told her. “But you can stop resembling her.”
Talia nodded.
Several months later she began therapy and moved away from the city. Beckett and I rebuilt our relationship slowly, with difficulty, but from the beginning. He had his own feeling of guilt because for a long time he had not noticed how his mother’s love had turned into control.
One evening, when the first snow came, Callum sat on the kitchen floor and was drawing a picture for the girls.
“Mother, now I have to draw four birds,” he told me.
“Why four?”
“Three for them and one for you. You protected everyone that day too, didn’t you?”
I smiled.
“You helped me, Callum.”
He shook his head.
“I only saw the bracelet.”
“Sometimes that is exactly what heroism is. Seeing what others do not look at.”
We moved into a new house, in a smaller town where the smell of a bakery came into the street in the mornings. I started working part-time at a children’s library. In the evenings I bathed the girls, while Callum invented fairy tales for them.
I kept Gemma’s bracelet in a small wooden box. Not because of fear. So that I would never forget how close the danger had been and how quickly the truth can find its way.
Eight months later I received a letter from Celestine. It said that she had changed, that she missed the family, and that she wanted to meet with me at least once.
Beckett read the letter and silently waited for me.
I wrote a reply.
“Your repentance may be real. But the safety of my children will no longer be your testing ground. We will not go back.”
I sent the letter and went to the window.
The first snow covered the yard in white. Callum’s drawing hung on the refrigerator. Four small copper-colored birds followed one another.
And in the wooden box lay the open bracelet, on which the morning light fell.
This time I closed the clasp myself.
And I gave the key to no one anymore.
Missed the beginning?
