My Husband Hung Up on Me the Night I Gave Birth novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Closet

Ryan finds her classroom and her cracked watch; Erin steps out and plays him the recording of the van, and a white van pulls up outside.

"No," Ryan said into his phone. "She's at her mother's. It's a coincidence."

A flashlight beam slid under the classroom door.

"Ma'am?" He knocked once. "Detective Tierney, Major Crimes. You called me from this building at ten o'clock. You're not in trouble. I only want to talk."

I knew that voice better than my own.

I crawled out from under the drying racks and into the supply closet behind my desk. I pulled the door almost shut.

Through the crack, I could see the whole room.

The door opened. He stopped on the threshold, because his light had landed on the sign beside the frame.

ROOM 9. MRS. TIERNEY. ART.

The beam shook.

He stood there a long moment. Then he came in slowly, flashlight low.

He looked at the paper towels under the racks, the scrubs folded over a chair, and the empty water bottle Gwen had pushed into my hand.

"Ma'am," he said again, quieter.

Above my desk hung twenty-six crayon drawings from my second-graders. GOOD LUCK WITH THE BABY MRS. TIERNEY.

In one of them, a purple stick woman with a huge round belly held hands with a stick man in a tie.

He stood under that one for a long time.

Then his light found my desk, the charger, and the watch with its screen split across.

He picked it up and turned it over.

I watched his lips read the engraving. So you can always reach me.

His hand closed around it.

He lifted his head and looked into the dark of my classroom.

"Erin?"

I pushed the closet door open and stepped out with the paper scissors from my desk drawer in my fist.

"Put your phone on the desk," I said. "Face down. Then back up to the board."

He did it. He didn't argue.

He stared at me. At the scrubs, the bandage taped in the crook of my arm, the way I held my side.

"You're not at your mother's," he said.

"No."

"You were Jane Doe." His voice cracked on the second word. "I walked right past you. I held your chart."

"You did."

"Erin, where's the baby?"

It was the first thing he asked, and I almost lost my nerve.

"Sit down, Ryan," I said.

He sat in a second-grader's chair with his knees up near his chest.

I held the watch out and pressed the side button.

A baby's thin, furious cry filled the room.

Then my own whisper. Hi, Bean. I'm your mama.

Ryan's whole face went still.

Then a man's voice on the recording, close to the microphone.

It's done. Tell Ms. Dearing it's a girl.

And after that, plainly, in the dark: Talk to any cop, and you never hear this baby cry again. Your husband's a cop. Think about who's sitting next to him tonight.

The recording ended.

I let the silence stand.

"I called you at 11:47," I said. "Three times. You hung up on the third."

"Erin."

"I told you a man was twenty feet away. You told me to call my doctor."

"Gwen said..." He stopped.

"Say it."

"Gwen said you'd done this before. That you were testing me." He rubbed his face with both hands. "She sat right next to me the whole night."

"The whole night?"

He opened his mouth to say yes.

Then he looked at the floor, and I watched him count.

"She went out around 11:30," he said slowly. "To take a call. She was gone about forty minutes."

"That's long enough," I said.

He raised his head.

His eyes were red, and he didn't look away from me, which was the first thing he'd done right in two days.

"She has my daughter," he said.

"Yes."

"Where is she?"

"At Gwen's. My phone is there. I watched the dot all day."

"Then I'm going over there."

"You're not." I stepped between him and the desk. "If you walk in with a badge, she'll hear it before you reach the porch. The man in that van said she'd never hear the baby again. He meant it."

"Erin, I can't leave her there."

"You left me there."

He flinched, and he didn't answer.

I was shaking, so I put the scissors down on the desk.

His phone buzzed face-down against the wood.

We both looked at it.

I turned it over with one finger.

A message from Gwen lit the screen.

Where did you go, sweetheart? Your location says Lincoln Elementary. Is Erin there?

Through the window behind me, headlights swung into the school lot.

A white van pulled in beside Ryan's car and stopped with its engine running.

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