Betrayed: She Took My Son novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: The Doctor

I was dressed before Philip finished the sentence.

"Don't call her," I said into the phone. "Don't threaten her. Text her something kind and then leave it alone."

"Kind?"

"She's frightened. Frightened people answer kind."

Clayton was already knocking on my door. Dot came out of hers with her boots laced and her braid undone.

We were at the Reeve house by three.

Philip stood in the nursery doorway in yesterday's shirt.

The crib was empty. The blue blanket was gone from the rail, and a dresser drawer hung open with half the onesies missing.

"Her phone goes straight to voicemail," he said. "I called the police at two-thirty. The dispatcher asked whose name was on the birth certificate."

"Hers," I said.

"Hers. She's the mother on paper. A mother left with her own baby, and it's a family matter." He laughed once, badly. "That's what the law thinks you are, isn't it? Family."

"It's what the law thought I was for seven months."

He flinched, and I let him.

Then he went to the den and came back with a folder as thick as a phone book.

"I carry this family on my agency's plan," he said. "Every time one of us sees a doctor, the insurer mails me a statement. I file them all."

He laid one on the desk.

It was dated the week after Liam was born. It listed a delivery, a live birth, and the name of the attending doctor.

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