Chapter 2 - THE FAMILIAR STROKE
The ambulance ride was a blur of flashing lights and the rhythmic beeping of the fetal monitor.
Every time the baby kicked, I breathed a prayer of thanks.
Mason’s car followed dangerously close to the bumper of the ambulance. When they wheeled me through the emergency room doors, he was already there, his tuxedo jacket gone, his tie discarded.
“He’s fine,” I told him before he could even ask. “The baby’s heart rate is strong.”
Mason dropped his head against the edge of my stretcher, his shoulders shaking just once.
“Thank God,” he whispered.
They moved me to an observation room. The doctor confirmed no placental abruption. We were lucky. But the tension in Mason’s jaw hadn’t vanished.
“Mason,” I said softly, as the nurse stepped out. “The note. Whose handwriting was it?”
He pulled the crumpled paper from his pocket. He stared at it, looking like a man whose entire reality had just fractured.
“The ‘R’ in Brooke,” Mason said, his voice hollow. “The crossed ‘t’s.”
“Who, Mason?”
He looked up, his eyes entirely broken.
“It’s my mother’s.”
Eleanor.
The woman who had gifted Lily her first silver rattle. The woman who had hosted our rehearsal dinner.
“No,” I whispered. “She’s been nothing but kind to me.”
“She’s the only one who still uses fountain pens,” Mason said, pointing to the black ink. “And she was the one who insisted you come tonight, even when I said you should rest.”
Before I could process the betrayal, Mason’s phone rang.
He answered it on speaker. It was his father, Arthur.
“Mason, where are you? Your mother is locked in the study. She’s tearing the room apart.”
Mason frowned. “Why?”
“She says someone stole her grandmother’s recipe journal,” Arthur said, his voice frantic. “The one with all her handwritten notes. And Mason… Richard is missing.”
Richard. Brooke’s husband.
May you like
Mason looked at me, the blood draining from his face.
The note wasn’t just written by someone. It had been traced.
