Chapter 3

Just when I thought I' d drown in the darkness, a new voice cut through the haze, calm and professional. "I'm Maria. The doula. I got your call, Mr. Henderson."

Michael' s tone shifted, becoming solicitous, concerned. "Thank God you' re here. My wife, she' s having a very hard time."

I felt hands on me, gentle, examining. Maria. She worked quickly, her presence a small point of light in the suffocating room. I drifted in and out, but I remember seeing my baby, a glimpse of a tiny, perfect form, hearing a faint cry just before the world went completely black as Michael gave me another dose of whatever he was using.

When I surfaced again, hours later, the cabin was quiet. Michael was gone. Maria sat beside me, her face grim.

"Sarah," she said softly, her eyes full of a sorrow that mirrored the gaping hole in my chest. "Your baby... your baby girl was born alive."

Alive. My heart leaped, then crashed. "Where is she? Is she okay?"

Maria' s hand tightened on mine. "Michael... he told me to tell you she was stillborn. He said... he said you were too weak, that the birth was too traumatic." Her voice broke. "He... he let her die, Sarah. Whether it was the drugs he gave you, or something he did after... she didn't make it long after she was born. He wanted no trace of her."

The words hit me, one by one, like stones. My baby. Dead. Murdered by her own father.

"He also told me," Maria continued, her voice barely a whisper, "to perform a hysterectomy. He said you shouldn't have any more children, that it would interfere with your... your 'earning potential.'" She looked disgusted.

A hysterectomy. He wanted to gut me, to make sure I was barren, useless for anything but what he planned.

"I couldn't," Maria said, her eyes fierce. "I wouldn't. I faked it. I made an incision, like for a C-section, enough for him to see a scar, to believe it was done. But you're whole, Sarah. You can still have children."

She paused, then looked me straight in the eye. "His amnesia, Sarah. It was all a lie. He told me himself, when he thought you were completely unconscious. He and your stepsister, Jessica, they planned all of this. She's the one he truly wants. You were just a pawn, a way to get something he desired."

The truth, raw and brutal, settled over me. The faked amnesia, the dead baby, the planned degradation. Maria, a stranger, had risked herself to tell me, to save me from one part of his monstrous plan. She was my only lifeline in this sea of betrayal. I clung to her words, the horror of them, because they were real, and everything else had been a lie.