Part of me wanted to run. Drive away. I thought about leaving you there in his care anonymously, like a gift from God. I wasn’t sure I could bear to see his face again when he answered the door. What would he say? What would I say? I was terrified that he would reject me, that he would reject you. As I stood there in the cold, it all seemed suddenly absurd, that I could ask this man with whom I’d spent a single night nine months earlier to take my baby. To accept a child into his life from a woman who was about to confess to him that she’d killed three men and was planning to kill a fourth. By all rights, he should arrest me, not help me.

But I remembered how I’d felt in January—that if I were in trouble, I could go to Tom, and he would suspend everything else in his life to be there for me. I still believed that. I hoped I was right.

Except of all things, he didn’t answer the door. I rang the bell again and again before I had to accept the fact that he wasn’t home. I’d driven all this way, and Tom wasn’t there. I had no idea if he was on patrol, gone for the night, looking after his father, or on vacation somewhere thousands of miles away. I didn’t know what to do. I sat down on the doorstep next to you, listening to the wind, watching the night, wondering what I could possibly do next when I had nowhere else to turn.

How long did I sit there? I don’t know. It felt like hours. I took off my coat because you were cold, and I wrapped you up in it, and I shivered. Then I cried. And I prayed. God had no reason at all to listen to the prayers of someone like me, but I hoped that maybe, maybe, maybe, he would answer my prayers for you, Shelby. You had done nothing wrong. You were innocent, pure, and perfect.

To this day, I believe God listened, because it was in the midst of my prayers that Tom came home. Down the road, I saw a truck coming at high speed. He didn’t even pull into his own driveway. He stopped the truck in the middle of the road, got out, and saw me. I’ll never forget the look on his face. He ran—he ran!—up the steps, and in the next moment, we were holding each other, kissing like lost lovers. If you ever wonder whether one night can change your life, Shelby, I swear to you it can. I’d spent one night with this man nine months earlier, and I was still madly in love with him. I’d been in love with him ever since that night.

Do I dare say it out loud?