The Harbor Court Hotel, near the next Ground Zero, was only 150 or so miles north. Driving with caution, he’d be there in four hours.

He smiled at the thought of what would occur after he arrived.

13 - LISA SCOTTOLINE

13

LISA SCOTTOLINE

Charley Middleton-Perez floated in that netherworld between wakefulness and sleep, anxiety tugging at the edge of her consciousness like a toddler at the hem of his mother’s skirt. She knew at some vague level that she was in a hospital room, that her husband Jack was asleep in the chair beside her, and that the doctors had given her meds to help her rest. From outside in the hall came the faint rattle of a cart gliding over a polished floor and people talking in low voices. She didn’t care enough to eavesdrop. She remained in the drug cocoon, pharmaceutically insulated from her fears.

Unfortunately, it was wearing off. And no drug could quell these fears, not forever. So much had happened, almost all at once. In her mind’s eye, she saw the scenes flicker backward in time, a gruesome rewind. Someone had tried to kill her. They’d murdered her mother, and she had seen her dead on the floor, her lovely features contorted and a blackening pool of blood beneath her head, seeping into the grains of the oak floor, filling its lines like a grisly etching.

Troubled, shifting in the bed, she flashed on her father running for his life. And her husband Jack had risked everything to save them both.

But there was one life he couldn’t save.

She heard a slight moan and realized that it came from her. She was waking up, though she wasn’t sure she wanted to. Closer to wakefulness than sleep, she felt an emptiness that she realized was literally true. She was empty now.

The baby was gone. The baby she had carried for the past five months, within her very body.

She had loved being pregnant, every minute of it. They had tried for the baby for so long, and she couldn’t believe when they’d finally gotten pregnant. She’d memorized baby books, and from day one of her pregnancy, was mindful that every spoonful she put into her mouth and every sip of every drink, she was taking for them both. She ate plain yogurt, gave up her beloved chocolate, fled from secondhand smoke and refused anti-nausea meds when her morning sickness was its worst. Her every thought had been to nurture the baby, one they’d both wanted so much.

Jack, Jr.

She had decided to name him Jack, Jr., and Jack would have loved the idea. Now she would never tell him her plan. He hadn’t wanted to know whether the baby was a boy or a girl, so she’d kept it from him too, though she was bursting with the news.