I slept less than an hour.
At dawn, I left the house before Claire woke, the bags from the store loaded into my car. I drove first to Hollow Creek and left them with Mr. Hanley, the motel owner, who had the build of a retired football coach and the suspicious eyes of a man who had seen too much trouble arrive smiling.
“She’ll get these,” he said.
“Thank you.”
He eyed me. “You the reason she cries when she thinks nobody hears?”
The question landed without mercy.
“One of them,” I said.
Mr. Hanley nodded as if honesty, however late, counted for something small. “Then be less of one today.”
At nine, I parked across from the clinic in Columbia.
Megan arrived five minutes later in an old blue sedan with rust near the wheel well. She took both babies inside without looking my way. I stayed where I was, hands gripping the steering wheel, watching parents come and go with strollers, diaper bags, sleepy toddlers, and lives that had not been split by secrets.
