Total pages in book: 143
Estimated words: 132834 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 664(@200wpm)___ 531(@250wpm)___ 443(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 132834 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 664(@200wpm)___ 531(@250wpm)___ 443(@300wpm)
“I don’t know why Hope would have left anything up here,” I said, unfolding the top of the first box. “Huh.” I poked through a few things. “This is definitely new baby stuff,” I said, catching sight of a video monitor beneath a blanket. “Far newer than anything left over from you or any of the younger Sawyers.”
I picked up the baby monitor and turned it over in my hands. “This is weird.”
“What’s weird?” Finn asked.
“Well, there hasn’t been a baby in this house since Sterling, right?”
“Not as far as I know,” Finn agreed. “Why?”
“This is the same baby monitor I had with Nicky, except maybe a model or two newer. The screen is bigger, and the whole thing is thinner. But Hope didn’t buy this. Her monitor is already set up downstairs, and it’s newer than this one.”
“Maybe she bought two?” Finn suggested.
I shook my head. “No, this system is expandable. It’s why I suggested it. She wouldn’t need another one.”
I pulled out my phone and hit the internet, searching up the model number and clicking the image search. Immediately I saw a picture of the video monitor I held in my hand. I clicked on it and scrolled down to the tech specs at the bottom of a sales page.
“Three years ago,” I said. “This model didn’t go on sale until three years ago.”
Finn stared at the open box and the monitor in my hand. He shifted the neat stacks of blankets and burp cloths, uncovering baby clothes. Girl’s clothes. So much pink. Light pink, hot pink, sparkly pink.
“This can’t belong to Hope and Griffen,” I said. “They didn’t know they had a girl until last night.”
“So who—” Finn let the question fade as we opened the other two boxes. More baby things. Cloth diapers, bottles, a breast pump, and two diaper bags. All of it brand new. Only the monitor had been opened. Everything else was still packaged, as if someone had purchased it all to prepare for a baby and then packed it up and put it in the attic.
The implications of that hit me like a freight train, and I sank to the floor, sudden tears rolling down my cheeks.
“What?” Finn asked, alarmed. “What’s wrong? Savannah?”
“It’s just—” I choked on the words. “Nobody buys all this stuff and then boxes it up unless—” The words caught in my throat, and a sob took my voice. I didn’t know what expectant mother these things had belonged to, but she wasn’t here, and neither was her baby.
Something terrible had happened. It was the only explanation. There was just too much here for any other option.
I still remembered the joy and the fear of pregnancy so clearly. Wanting Nicky so badly and knowing the many ways things could go wrong. People treat childbirth like it’s a given, but it’s not. These things represented one of my worst fears. I sobbed, unable to stop myself, still raw from the ordeal of getting Hope to the hospital, memories of Nicky’s birth, and the rush of joy that Hope and her daughter were safe and healthy.
“I’m sorry,” I sobbed as Finn pulled me into his lap, wiping the tears from my face.
“You don’t need to apologize,” he said. “This is fucking sad. Even if the baby had turned out to be a boy instead of a girl, they still would have needed the rest of this stuff. My father was a dickhead, but this almost makes me feel bad for him.”
Finn’s words sparked in my brain, chasing away my tears as information took shape in my mind.
“Finn,” I said. “The letters Scarlett found when she was looking for that missing statue. The blackmail notes from Vanessa to Prentice. They mentioned a new Mrs. Sawyer and a secret Prentice was keeping. Vanessa wanted half a million to keep her mouth shut.”
Finn nodded, realization dawning.
I went on. “In one of the notes, Vanessa said Prentice was running out of time.”
I looked up at Finn, my eyes wide with surprising possibility. “What if the new Mrs. Sawyer was pregnant?”
Chapter Forty
FINN
“Let me see those letters,” Hope said, her hand out, baby Stella curved in her arm, now blessedly asleep. I’d come in from Savannah’s this morning to near-constant wailing, which was the new norm. The kid had some lungs on her.
I handed Hope the stack of blackmail letters from Vanessa to Prentice, wondering what she would see that I hadn’t. Once we told her about the baby things we found in the attic, she immediately asked to see Vanessa’s letters.
It felt like Savannah and I had found the baby things in the attic a lifetime ago. It was a little nuts that we hadn’t managed a family meeting in the past two weeks to discuss what we found, but a newborn in the house had turned routine upside down, and we couldn’t have the meeting without Griffen and Hope. I knew if we did, Hope, at least, would have killed us.