“She had so much black hair,” she found herself saying, picturing it in her mind. “And the longest fingers, like yours.” She remembered staring at them, touching them, running her fingertips over the wrinkled skin.

“Wait...I don’t understand...” Dan murmured. “My daughter. Our daughter...” His voice, thick with emotion, trailed off. “Oh, God, it all makes sense now. The way you were acting. How sad you were. The weird things you kept saying...and sometimes...you looked at Amelia like she was a stranger.” It was almost like he was talking to himself. Whitney didn’t know what to say. Wasn’t sure he was even looking for an answer from her. “I just... God, I don’t...understand. You never said anything.” Another pause. A heavy breath. “I don’t get how you could lose our baby and then just take somebody else’s.”

Whitney sniffed, wiped her eyes. “I didn’t just take her. Millie offered.”

“You want me to believe that your friend gave you her baby? And none of it was your idea? She just came into your room and then came up with this crazy plan?” he asked.

Whitney hurrying down the hallway in her socked feet, clutching the baby to her chest. Rounding the corner, she slipped into the hospital room. Millie was lying in the bed, dead asleep, bruises blooming on her skin. Machines beeped. An unnatural green light illuminated the room. A baby lay in a clear plastic bassinet next to Millie’s bed, her chest rising and falling. The child in Whitney’s arms was still.

Whitney blinked, shaking away the unexpected, confusing memory.

“Whitney?”

“Um...” Whitney swallowed hard. “Yes. That’s how it happened. You remember Millie, Dan. How messed up she was. Are you really surprised?”

“Even if that’s true, how could you go through with it? All these years, passing someone else’s child off as your own?”

“We’ve given Amelia a good life. We saved her. Do you have any idea what her life would’ve been like if I’d left her with Millie?”

“But she wasn’t yours to take.”

“Our baby was gone, Dan. There was nothing I could do to bring her back,” Whitney said. “But Amelia needed a home. A family. Do you really wish I hadn’t taken Millie up on her offer? Do you wish Amelia had never been a part of our lives? That she was Mitch’s instead?”

Silence rang out. Whitney’s heart pounded in her chest. So much was riding on his answer. Lauren would always be a loose cannon, ready to fire off at any moment. But she needed to know that Dan would be her rock. Someone she could count on. Someone who would defend her decision. Believe in it.

The dark eyes of Millie’s baby blinking in the dark.