Part 2
The car carried me away from the hotel, but it could not carry the sound of Alexander shouting my name out of my mind.
I sat with one hand pressed to the cold window and the other over my stomach, trying to breathe slowly enough for the baby to feel none of the fear tightening my chest.
The driver glanced at me in the mirror.
“Would you like me to take you somewhere specific, Mrs. Moretti?”
I opened my mouth, but my voice failed me.
Then the baby shifted beneath my palm, a small, unmistakable flutter.
“Take me to my mother’s house,” I managed.
It had been empty since my mother died, a modest house by the lake on the quieter edge of the city.
I had not stayed there in years, but I still remembered the way the old screen door creaked and how the
morning light gathered on the water.
