⸻
She finally looked me in the eyes.
“Mom… she’s mine now.”
⸻
We sat in the car for almost twenty minutes before Callie said another word, the baby sleeping soundly against her shoulder, one tiny fist curled near her own chin.
⸻
“I need you to just listen to the whole thing before you say anything,” Callie finally said. “Please.”
⸻
“I’m listening,” I said, my hands gripping the steering wheel though I hadn’t started the engine.
⸻
“My roommate this summer was a girl named Nadia,” Callie said. “She’s seventeen. She was pregnant when she got here in May, already about seven months along. She hid it under her uniform the whole time. Nobody at the resort knew. Not management, not the other girls in our cabin.”
⸻
“You knew,” I said slowly.
⸻
“I found out in June,” Callie said. “She was crying in the bathroom one night, and I heard her, and I just… asked. She made me promise not to tell anyone. She was terrified someone would call her family, and her family is why she ran in the first place.”
⸻
“Ran from what?” I asked.
⸻
“Her stepfather,” Callie said quietly. “She wouldn’t tell me everything, but enough that I understood she couldn’t ever go back there, especially not with a baby.”
