Chapter 3 - The Target on Our Cradle
The garden around us seemed to tilt on its axis. The cheerful pink and blue streamers fluttering from the patio awning suddenly looked like crime scene tape.
I stared at the phone screen, my vision blurring at the edges as the words burned into my retina: Baby Girl Smith-Miller. Parents: Alex and Chloe.
"Our... our baby?" I choked out, the syllables feeling foreign and impossible in my throat. I looked up from the screen, my gaze darting wildly between my husband and my sister. "What... what is this? Alex, what is this?"
Alex closed his eyes for a fraction of a second, a tear finally escaping down his dust-streaked cheek. "She didn't just plan to steal any baby, Chloe. She tracked your prenatal appointments. She hacked my email to get the notifications from your OB-GYN. You gave birth yesterday morning at St. Jude’s while I was running errands for this stupid party. You’re still in the hospital recovery room. Or rather, you were supposed to be, until I checked your room thirty minutes ago and found you fast asleep from a sedative slipped into your hospital water pitcher."
A cold sweat broke out across my spine. I remembered the nurse bringing me a fresh pitcher of ice water yesterday afternoon, right after the epidural wore off. I remembered taking a long, thirsty drink because my throat felt parched. Then the heavy, dreamless blackness had pulled me under for hours. When I woke up, my head was fuzzy, and the nurse told me I had just experienced a normal post-delivery crash.
"She drugged me," I whispered, the horror creeping into my veins like liquid ice. I looked at Emily. My own blood. My sister. "You drugged me in my hospital room? To what? Take my baby?"
"She was going to wheel her out in a transport bassinet," Alex said, his voice trembling with a mixture of rage and terror. "She had a forged visitor badge, a nurse's scrub jacket she stole from the laundry bin last week, and administrative clearance codes she bought off some crooked clerk on the dark web. She was going to walk right out the maternity ward doors with our daughter, claim she was taking her to the NICU for observation, and then hand her over to Julian to raise as their own."
Emily let out a sharp, mocking laugh that cut through the heavy silence of the yard. "Oh, please, don't act like such a victim, Chloe. You’re young! You can have another baby. You and Alex have plenty of time. Julian and I needed this. And besides, it keeps the baby in the family! Think of how much Thanksgiving dinners would have been simplified."
"You psycho!" Mark roared, finally breaking his stunned freeze. He surged forward, grabbing Emily by the arm and spinning her around so hard she stumbled against the lawn chair. "Shut your filthy mouth! You were going to steal our niece? You were going to drug our sister and rob her blind?"
"Don't you dare touch me, Mark!" Emily screeched, clawing at his hands like a trapped wildcat. "Dad! Are you just going to let them abuse me? Look at my dress! Look what Alex did to me! He assaulted me in front of everyone!"
My father stood frozen near the center of the patio, staring down at the foam belly resting in the crushed cake like a discarded prop from a horror movie. The color had completely drained from his face, leaving him looking ancient and frail. The bright, proud patriarch of the family had evaporated in less than five minutes.
"Emily," my father said, his voice raspy and broken, sounding like a man speaking from the bottom of a well. "Is... is any of what he’s saying true? Did you... did you plan to take your sister's child?"
Emily stopped struggling against Mark. She straightened her posture, adjusting the strap of her ruined blue dress with chilling composure. She looked my father dead in the eye, and without a shred of remorse, she nodded.
"Yes," Emily said clearly. "Because nobody ever says no to Emily. You never did, Dad. Not when I wanted to go to fashion school in Paris, not when I wrecked my first three cars, and not when I wanted a family of my own. You always indulged me. Why should this be any different?"
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My mother let out a high-pitched wail from where she sat on the grass, burying her face in her hands as her body shook with violent sobs. "Where did we go wrong?" she cried out to the empty air. "Where did we raise a monster?"
Before anyone could answer, the sharp, wailing sirens we had heard in the distance suddenly intensified, cutting off the conversation entirely. Two police cruisers and an unmarked detective vehicle tore around the corner of our quiet suburban street, tires crunching loudly on the asphalt as they slammed to a halt right in front of our open driveway.
