Chapter 7: What Luke Had Told Her
The silence on the line stretched long enough that I thought she'd ended the call.
Then: "He said you cried every time you talked about the baby.
That you told him you weren't ready.
That you'd made a mistake."
"I cried because I was scared," I said.
"Because it was my first child.
Because I loved her before she was born and I didn't know how to hold that much feeling."
Another silence.
Solis was watching me with both hands still, not moving, not pushing.
"Renata.
I know you love Eli.
I know losing him through the courts was—"
"Don't." Her voice cracked for the first time.
"Don't talk to me about Eli."
"Okay." I stopped.
Let the air settle.
"Then just tell me June is warm."
A beat.
"She's warm."
"Is she crying?"
"She was.
She stopped."
"She needs to eat, Renata.
She's a newborn.
She needs to eat within the next hour or she'll need medical attention.
That's not a threat.
That's just what's true."
The line was quiet.
I heard, faintly, the sound of a baby.
Not crying.
The small, searching sounds a newborn makes when she's starting to wake up and realize the world has not yet given her what she needs.
My body responded before my mind did.
A physical pull, deep and involuntary.
"That's her," I said.
My voice came out wrong.
"That's June."
Renata didn't answer.
"Please." I stopped trying to sound steady.
"Please bring her back.
Whatever Luke told you, whatever you believed about me — you can be angry at me later.
You can hate me later.
But right now she needs to eat and I am her mother and I am asking you."
A long pause.
Then Renata said: "He told me you were leaving her."
"I know."
"He told me she needed someone."
"I know what he told you."
"I wanted—" Her voice fractured.
"I just wanted to be someone's mother again."
"I know," I said.
And I meant it.
Not as a tactic.
Not as a way to get June back faster.
I meant it because she was a woman who had lost her child and been lied to by a man she had trusted, and that was a thing I now understood in a way I hadn't four hours ago.
"The barn," she said finally.
"Dara's place.
I'm still here.
I haven't left."
I looked at Solis.
She was already moving.
"Stay on the line with me," I said to Renata.
"Just stay on the line."
"Okay."
"Tell me what she looks like right now."
A pause.
Then, softly: "She has dark hair.
A lot of it."
"She does."
"And her hands—" Renata's voice broke fully.
"Her hands are so small."
May you like
"I know," I said.
"I know."
