Chapter 1 - The Mark Beneath the Blanket
The moment my daughter’s boyfriend turned around with a newborn baby in his arms, my husband stopped breathing.
I had been standing in our living room, folding a towel that was already folded, when the front door opened.
My daughter Leah came in first. Her boyfriend, Isaiah Brooks, followed with a baby wrapped in a pale yellow blanket.
Neither of them looked happy.
Leah was twenty-six. She had been dating Isaiah for almost three years, and I knew that expression on her face. It was the one she wore when she had something difficult to tell me but hadn't figured out how.
“Mom, we need to talk.”
I put the towel down.
“Whose baby is that?”
Isaiah shifted the little girl carefully against his chest.
“She’s my sister’s.”
“Jama’s?” I asked.
He nodded.
Jama Brooks was Isaiah’s twenty-four-year-old sister. She was quiet, intelligent, and unusually polite about things nobody needed to apologize for. She had worked briefly at my husband’s property management office the previous winter.
She had also spent a night in our guest room just three days earlier.
My husband Charles appeared from the hallway.
“What’s going on?”
Isaiah looked at him, and something changed in his expression.
“Jama left the baby with me this morning,” he explained. “She said she needed to take care of something. I thought she meant she'd be gone an hour.”
“And?” Charles demanded.
“She hasn't come back. Her phone is off. Nobody knows where she went.”
Leah folded her arms tightly.
“We've called everyone we can think of.”
I stepped closer to the baby.
She was beautiful. Thick dark curls covered her small head. Her cheeks were round, and one tiny fist rested beside her chin.
“How old is she?”
“Almost three weeks,” Isaiah answered.
I felt a strange sadness.
I'd known Jama was pregnant, but she had become distant during the final months. Isaiah had told us she wanted privacy.
Now her newborn daughter was in my living room, and nobody knew where the child's mother had gone.
Charles moved toward Isaiah.
“Why would she leave a baby with you?”
“Because I'm her brother.”
“Don't get smart with me. I'm asking what she told you.”
The sharpness in Charles's voice made Leah turn.
“Dad, he's worried enough.”
Charles ignored her.
“Where did she go?”
“I don't know.”
“Did she say anything about me?”
The question landed strangely.
Isaiah frowned.
“No. Why would she?”
Charles didn't answer.
The baby began fussing. Isaiah lifted her higher against his shoulder, gently patting her back.
Her yellow blanket slipped.
So did the collar of her little cotton sleeper.
And there, just below her left shoulder blade, was a dark crescent-shaped birthmark.
Charles froze.
I had been married to that man for twenty-eight years.
I knew his breathing.
I knew the way his jaw tightened when he was angry. I knew how he pressed his lips together when an inconvenient truth was approaching.
But I had never seen his face look like that.
He stared at the baby as though something impossible had appeared in front of him.
“Charles?” I said.
He took one step backward.
Then, without speaking, he reached for the bottom of his shirt.
He slowly lifted it.
On the left side of his abdomen was a large crescent-shaped birthmark.
The same distinctive curve.
The same dark coloring.
I had touched that mark hundreds of times throughout our marriage.
Leah gasped.
Isaiah looked from Charles's stomach to the baby's back.
“What the hell?” he whispered.
Charles dropped his shirt.
For several seconds, nobody moved.
A birthmark alone could not prove that a man was a child's father. I knew that.
But Charles's reaction was telling me something he had spent months hiding.
“Charles,” I said quietly. “What have you done?”
He looked at me.
“Denise, don't jump to conclusions.”
I felt my stomach turn.
“Why did you just show us that mark?”
“I don't know.”
“That's not an answer.”
He rubbed his forehead.
“Coincidences happen.”
I stared at him.
“Then look me in the eye.”
He couldn't.
Isaiah pulled the blanket back over his niece.
“Wait. Are you saying Mr. Walker could be her father?”
Charles turned sharply.
“Watch what you're accusing me of.”
“I'm asking a question!”
The baby started crying.
Leah took her gently from Isaiah while I kept my eyes on my husband.
Three days earlier, Jama had spent the night in our house while I was away visiting my older sister.
Charles had told me Jama needed somewhere to sleep because she was having trouble with her apartment.
At the time, I had believed him.
Now I remembered something else.
When I returned home, the sheets from the guest bedroom were already in the washing machine.
Charles almost never did laundry.
I moved closer.
“Jama didn't come here because of her apartment, did she?”
He said nothing.
“She came here to see you.”
Charles looked toward the front door.
May you like
And then he said six words that made the room go cold.
“I told her not to come.”
