No Shelter Left novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: The Hospital Bracelet

Jude touched Aisling's shoulder once and went out to the street.

The bell on the door rang behind him. Then it was only the dryers and the buzzing light.

Aisling sat down across the folding table from her mother.

"Colby doesn't know I'm here," Marianne said. "Neither does Kaitlyn. I told the driver I was going to church."

"Are you here to ask me for something?"

Her mother flinched.

"I was going to," she said. "I had it ready in the car."

"What was it?"

"A small thing, for Kaitlyn. A song at the Awards."

"And?"

"And I looked at you through the window, and I couldn't."

She opened her purse and took out a small plastic bracelet in a sandwich bag.

It was the kind they put on newborns, white and gone yellow, with a printed name that had almost faded away.

LARKIN, BABY GIRL.

"Do you know how it happened?" Marianne said.

"A nurse mixed us up. You told me."

"I told you a sentence." Her mother turned the bag over. "The ward was full."

"Mom."

"They brought me one baby, and she was so loud and so pink, and I thought, there you are."

Aisling said nothing.

"They had put this on her wrist. It was yours."

She laid the bag flat on the table.

"You were in another room with another woman's name on you. I fed Kaitlyn and slept with her on my chest."

"I know."

"I held her first." Marianne's eyes filled. "That is all it was. I held her first, and then it was twenty-three years."

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