“No,” Richard said from the doorway. “She gave it to me after an argument. Said she didn’t want reminders.”
He stopped, as if he had said too much.
“Reminders of what?” I asked.
He looked at the blanket.
“Of who she used to be.”
That answer stayed with me through dinner, through Noah’s feeding, through the careful process of settling into a bed that was not mine but somehow felt safer than my apartment ever had.
Later, after Evelyn went to warm a bottle and Richard checked the locks, my phone buzzed.
A text from an unknown number.
I opened it with my heart already pounding.
It was a photograph of a handwritten note.
Not my mother’s handwriting.
Not Whitney’s.
The message read:
Ask Richard about the day your mother tried to leave.
Below it was another line:
And ask why Noah looks like the baby in the yellow blanket.
