Damian's house was not what I expected either.

I had pictured something cold.

Steel and glass and silence.

Instead it was warm in the way that money tries to compensate for grief — thick rugs, soft lighting, fresh flowers in every room that no one had asked for.

A woman met us at the door.

Mid-fifties.

Gray hair pulled back.

She looked at Leah first, then at me, and her expression did something complicated.

"This is Mrs.

Holt," Damian said.

"Leah's nanny."

Mrs.

Holt crouched down to Leah's level.

"Hello, sweetheart.

Did you have a good dinner?"

Leah didn't answer.

She pressed closer to my side and tucked her face against my arm.

Mrs.

Holt straightened slowly.

She looked at me the way people look at something they don't have a category for yet.

"She spoke tonight," Damian said.

"At the restaurant."

Mrs.

Holt's hand went to her mouth.

"She — what did she say?"

"Mama." He said it quietly.

"She said it to her."

The nanny looked at me for a long moment.

Then she pressed her lips together and walked away without another word.

Damian led me into a study off the main hall.

He closed the door, gestured toward a chair, and sat across from me with his hands folded on the desk.

"I need you to tell me everything," he said.

"From the beginning."

I told him.

I told him about the pregnancy.

About going in alone because the father had already left.

About the labor that went wrong in the final hour — the drop in the baby's heartbeat, the nurses rushing in, the doctor's face when he came to speak to me afterward.

"They said she didn't survive," I said.

"They said it happens sometimes.

They gave me a form to sign.

I was alone and I was in shock and I signed it."

"Did you see her?"

The question landed like a stone.

"They said it would be too painful.

They said she was — they said it was better not to." My voice dropped.

"I believed them.

I was twenty-four and I was alone and I believed them."

Damian opened a drawer and set a folder on the desk between us.

"After Elena d*ed," he said, "I had every record from that night pulled.

I have people who can access things that aren't meant to be accessed." He paused.

"There were two deliveries at Mercy General on March fourteenth.

Both girls.

One mother d*ed.

One baby was recorded as d*ed."

He opened the folder.

Two admission forms.

Two sets of handwriting.

One name I didn't recognize.

And one name I knew.

Mine.

"The signatures on the transfer paperwork," he said, "don't match the attending physician on record that night.

Someone signed off on both outcomes who wasn't supposed to be in that ward."

My hands were shaking.

I pressed them flat against my knees.

"Who?" I asked.

"That's what I've been trying to find out for two years." He looked at the folder, then at me.

"I stopped pushing because I thought it was a clerical error.

Because they told me it was corrected.

Because Leah was alive and I was grieving and I didn't have the strength to pull that thread any further."

He closed the folder.

"I'm going to pull it now."

I looked through the glass door toward the hallway, where Leah had fallen asleep on the sofa with her velvet rabbit tucked under her chin.

"What if it isn't a clerical error?" I asked.

Damian followed my gaze.

"Then someone in that hospital made a choice," he said.

"And they've had two years to believe no one would ever find out."

His phone buzzed on the desk.

He glanced at the screen and his jaw tightened.

He turned it so I could see the message.

*You should have stayed away from her.

Both of you.*

The number was blocked.