Chapter 1 - THE BOY ON THE PORCH
The first strike landed across my upper back.
I twisted hard against the porch pillar, trying to turn my belly away even though Daniel had never aimed for it. Both wrists were tied above my head, rope biting into skin already swollen from pregnancy. I could not raise my hands. I could not shield my face. I could only shift my shoulders and bend my knees while the weathered boards creaked beneath me.
“You’re useless!” Daniel shouted.
His thin wooden stick cracked against my shoulder again.
Margaret stood near the open back door in her faded house dress, gray hair pulled tight, watching without surprise.
That hurt almost as much as Daniel’s rage.
I was thirty-two, nearly eight months pregnant, and carrying what a private prenatal blood test had told us was another girl.
Daniel had wanted a son for years.
Not wanted.
Obsessed.
The obsession had grown from disappointment into resentment, from resentment into blame, and from blame into the man standing in front of me with a stick in his hand.
“You can’t even give me a son!”
I sobbed, “Daniel, stop.”
He lifted the stick again.
The back door flew open.
A little boy sprinted onto the porch.
He wore a blue T-shirt, jeans, and sneakers dusty from the yard. He could not have been older than eight.
“DAD! PLEASE DON’T HIT MOM!”
Daniel froze mid-swing.
The stick stayed above his shoulder.
I lifted my head.
The boy ran straight toward us.
Daniel’s expression changed from rage to total confusion.
“What did you call me?”
The boy reached me, wrapped both arms around my waist, and pressed his face against my maternity dress.
“You’re my dad!”
Daniel lowered the stick.
Margaret went white.
That was the first thing I noticed.
Not confused.
Not shocked.
Terrified.
The stick slipped from Daniel’s hand and clattered against the porch.
He pointed at the child.
“Why are you calling me Dad?”
The boy looked up.
His eyes were brown like Daniel’s.
But I barely saw them.
Behind his left ear, just below the hairline, was a tiny crescent-shaped birthmark.
My breath stopped.
Eight years earlier, after thirty hours of labor and an emergency delivery, I had held my first baby for less than a minute.
A boy.
He had been small, silent, and wrapped in a white hospital blanket.
And behind his left ear had been the same crescent-shaped mark.
Then nurses had rushed him away.
Margaret told me hours later that he had died.
Daniel had been in another hospital wing after collapsing from exhaustion and a panic attack. By the time he returned, the baby was gone.
We never saw a body.
We were told the hospital handled everything because the remains had been transferred for examination.
I had spent eight years trying not to ask questions I thought grief had already answered.
Now the boy squeezed me tighter.
“Mom,” he whispered, crying. “Aunt Rebecca said I had to find you.”
Daniel slowly turned toward Margaret.
His mother backed toward the open door.
“Margaret,” I said.
She shook her head once.
“No.”
Daniel’s voice became dangerously quiet.
“Mother, who is this child?”
Margaret looked at the boy.
Then at me.
May you like
Then at Daniel.
And instead of answering, she ran into the house and locked the back door behind her.
