That night, I couldn’t sleep.

 

The apartment was quiet, but in my mind I kept hearing it — that broken newborn cry, echoing in the dark like he was still calling out for me.

The Call

Two days later, the phone rang. It was Detective Ruiz, one of the officers who had come to my house.

“Mrs. Bennett,” he said carefully, “we found something… about the baby.”

I braced myself. “Is he okay?”

“He’s stable,” the detective assured me. “But there’s more. The hospital ran tests and identified the baby’s mother. We thought you might want to know.”

I wasn’t sure why they’d think that. But then he said the name.

And everything stopped.

“The mother’s name is Alyssa Morgan.”