“She was wrecked,” he said with his back to the room. “She just sort of folded up when I got there, and even when she pulled it together, she looked sick.”
“She wasn’t hurt.” Mitch held up a hand when Harper whirled. “I know how you feel. I do. But she wasn’t physically harmed, and that’s important.”
“This time,” he shot back. “It’s out of hand. All of this is fucking out of hand.”
“Only more reason for us to stick together, and stay calm.”
“I’ll be calm when she’s out of the house.”
“Amelia,” Logan asked, “or Hayley?”
“Right now? Both.”
“You know she can stay with us. And if I were in your shoes, I’d want to pack her up and haul her out. But from what I gather, you tried that once and it didn’t work. If you think you’ve got a better shot at it now, I’ll carry her suitcase.”
“She won’t budge. What the hell is wrong with these women?”
“They feel connected.” David spread his hands. “Even when they see Amelia at her worst, they feel attached. Engaged. Right or wrong, Harp, there’s a kind of solidarity.”
“And it’s her home,” Mitch added. “As much as yours now, or mine. She won’t walk out of it and leave this undone. Any more than you, or I, or any or us.” He glanced around the room. “So we finish it.”
Logic, even truth, didn’t settle Harper’s anger, or his worry. “You didn’t see her after it happened.”
“No, but I’ve got the gist from what you told me. She matters to me, too, Harper. To all of us.”
“All for one, great. I’m for it.” His gaze shifted to the parlor doors, and his mind traveled upstairs, to Hayley. “But she’s the one on the line.”
“Agreed.” Mitch leaned forward in his chair to draw Harper’s attention back to him. “Let’s look at what happened for a minute. Hayley was taken through childbirth, and a traumatic aftermath when Amelia was told the baby was dead. And she went through this while she was napping with Lily. But Lily wasn’t disturbed. That tells me that there’s no intent to harm or even frighten the baby. If there were, how long do you think it would take Hayley to head out that door?”
“That may be true, but to get whatever it is she wants, Amelia’s going to keep using Hayley, and using her hard.”
“I agree.” Mitch nodded. “Because it works. Because this way she’s feeding us information we might not ever be able to find. We know now that not only was her child taken from her, but that she was told, cruelly, that it was dead. It’s hardly a wonder that her mind, which already seemed to be somewhat imbalanced, shattered.”
“We can assume she came here for him,” Logan suggested. “And died here.”
“Well, the kid’s dead, too. Dead as she is, dead as disco.” Harper slumped into a chair. “She’s not going to find him here.”
UPSTAIRS, HAYLEY WOKE from a light doze. The curtains were pulled so the light was dim but for a thin chink. She saw Roz sitting, reading a book in that narrow spear of light.
“Lily.”
Roz set the book aside and rose. “Stella has her. She took her and the boys over to the other wing to play so you’d have some quiet. How are you feeling?”
“Exhausted. A little raw inside yet.” But she sighed, comforted when Roz sat and stroked her hair. “It was harder than when I had Lily, rougher and longer. I know it was only a few minutes, really, but it seemed like hours. Hours and hours of pain and heat. Then this awful muzzy feeling toward the end. They gave her something, and it made her kind of float away, but it was almost worse.”
“Laudanum, I imagine. Nothing like a shot of opiate.”
“I heard the baby cry.” Struggling to relax, Hayley curled on her side, tilting her head up to keep Roz in her line of sight. “You know how it is, no matter what’s gone on in those hours before, everything inside you rising up when you hear your baby cry the first time.”
“Hers.” Roz took Hayley’s hand. “Not yours.”
“I know, I know, but for that instant he was mine. And that horrible tearing grief, that crazy disbelief when the doctor said it was stillborn, that was mine, too.”
“I’ve never lost a child,” Roz told her. “I can’t even
imagine the pain of it.”
“They lied to her, Roz. I guess he paid them, too. They lied, but she knew. She heard the baby cry, and she knew. It drove her crazy.”