Chapter One — The Man at the Door
Mark stood in the doorway.
Not the Mark who had left me seven months earlier with a suitcase in one hand and cruelty in his mouth.
This Mark looked ruined.
His hair was messy, his shirt wrinkled, his face pale like he had run all the way there and still arrived too late. For one breath, I thought he had come back because some part of him had finally woken up.
Then I saw the woman behind him.
Older. Elegant. Trembling.
She had Mark’s eyes.
The doctor stood so fast his chair scraped the floor.
“Elaine,” he whispered.
The woman covered her mouth. “Daniel.”
My heart pounded against my ribs.
I looked from the doctor to Mark, then to the woman. “What is happening?”
Mark wouldn’t meet my eyes.
The doctor—Dr. Daniel Reeves, according to the badge pinned to his coat—turned toward me with a face full of pain.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I should have told you before anyone came in.”
Elaine stepped forward, tears already falling. “Please. I need to see him.”
I pulled my son closer to my chest, every instinct in me rising like fire. “No one touches my baby until somebody explains.”
For once, no one argued.
Mark swallowed. “Lena…”
“Don’t,” I snapped. “You don’t get to say my name like you didn’t leave me alone.”
His face twisted, but he stayed quiet.
Dr. Reeves looked at my newborn again, and the tears returned to his eyes.
“That baby,” he said softly, “has a birthmark behind his left ear.”
I froze.
My hand moved instinctively to my son’s head.
A small crescent mark sat there, dark and clear.
“So?” I whispered.
Elaine made a broken sound.
Dr. Reeves closed his eyes. “It runs in one family. Mine.”
