Page 88 of Secret Baby for the Italian Mafia King

We have to stay until late morning, but the hospital staff all seem pleased with Harper’s recovery and appetite. She, of course, takes it all in stride. She’s used to the hospital routine, and unlike me, nothing about it scares her anymore. You don’t get used to seeing your child in the hospital, no matter how often it happens. It always feels wrong.

The nurses bring her breakfast, and I’m embarrassed that I can still get teary-eyed over something as innocuous as Harper eating a full meal. She’s made an amazing turn around already. Now that the medication wore off, it’s like she’s back to her old self.

We aren’t even out of the hospital yet, and I’m already trying to convince Harper to stay in her bed, and to be still, and maybe try to get some rest. She’s squirmy and excited, and almost completely back to her normal self now that they’ve flushed her system and pumped her full of electrolytes. The world settles as quickly as it fell apart. There’s no surgery or months of recovery. A storm cloud passed over the sun, but now it’s bright again, like it never happened. I’m not used to disasters justpassinglike that. For me, they always seem to linger.

Ren leaves us to get things ready for Harper going home. He kisses the top of her head, and then, seemingly without thinking too much about it, does the same to my forehead. A soft, absent-minded kiss as he’s heading out the door. And it feels likehimagain.

I watch him, feeling a little dazed as he walks out the door, and I have the most absurd urge to run after him, screaming and begging him not to go—because that Ren might not come back.

Harper is wheeled to the car, enjoying her mandatory wheelchair ride as we exit. Waiting for us isn’t just one car, but three, and all the men inside are more Marco look-alikes. Shaved heads and gear bodies.

Marco himself opens the back door for us. I’m surprised Ren isn’t among them.

“Where’s Ren?” I ask.

“Running some business, ma’am.”

Then shouldn’t these men be with him? My thoughts circle back to the meeting. He never did tell me how it went. Maybe his silence should tell me enough. I step into the back with Harper, and we are escorted home in slow, cautious procession. I hear chirps and static voices from the front of the car, like a police radio scanner, but the words are too muffled to make out.

The curb of the house is littered with trash as we arrive. I could mistake it for a homeless camp. A little bit of everything is strewn in front of the building. Smashed cartons of eggs, an overturned bottle of Windex seeping into the sidewalk cracks. A half-eaten head of lettuce has rolled, forlorn, into the gutter. Nothing is even bagged.

“What happened?” Harper asks, amazed at the mess.

I heft Harper up and tiptoe over the trash. Marco steps inside first. A cleaning crew are tackling the downstairs level of thehouse. They’re cleaning out the pantries and fridge. Even the wine rack has been stripped bare—as if I poured Harper a full-bodied red into her juice box for school.

The cleaning crew won’t look at me, and they don’t look at each other. They work fast, like ants, ducking their heads from something. I get the uneasy feeling that it’s not money keeping them moving methodically and fast, but threats.

Our entourage reports our arrival over a headset clipped to Marco’s ear.

It all feels too dystopian for my taste. I take Harper into her bedroom, close the door between us and the rest of the world. I don’t know what else to do. Ren is gone, and even with a whole team of security guards, I feel utterly alone.

Harper and I spend a sleepy afternoon together, with drizzly rain tapping on the window outside. I keep her wrapped up in my arms as she watches TV. She’s already asking if she gets to go back to her new school tomorrow. I can barely stand the thought of it; I don’t even know what tomorrow looks like.

But the question jogs my foggy memory. The school forwarded me the security footage, and I watch it on my phone while Harper dozes off against my shoulder, the two of us dogpiled on her bed with clean sheets right out of the laundry. Harper hasn’t even noticed.

I watch Harper on the screen. She eats out of her own lunch box. She doesn’t swap with any of the other kids or get anything extra out of the lunch line. I study every minute of that half-hour footage, and I come to the same conclusion as the schooladministration: If Harper ate something tampered with, it was something that I put in her lunch box with my own hands.

The thought makes me want to vomit.

I curl up around Harper, my stomach sour. It was bad enough when it was her own body trying to hurt her. Now, is it someone else? Someone that has the keys to this very house? I lie awake, tired and stiff from a night in a hospital room, but sleep doesn’t come easy.

Only as the hours pass, and the TV shuts off automatically, and the window grows gray and wet, does my cheek finally tilt against the crown of Harper’s dark hair, and I fall asleep.

***

Glass shatters. I’m on my feet before I know I’m awake.

They’re breaking down the door, and they’re going to take me—

I blink my old studio apartment out of my fogged mind, find myself in Harper’s bedroom.

“What was that?”

She’s sitting up next to me, all wild bedhead and big eyes, as we stare toward the doorway. There are voices. Shouting.

“Stay here,” I tell her immediately. I go to the door and peek out, ignoring the tremor of fear shaking my kneecaps like a cup of Jell-O.

My eyes sweep the floor of the foyer, drawn to something that isn’t trash. Small droplets of red spatter toward the living room. It’s not a river of blood, but it’s still blood. Violent little breadcrumbs.

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