Chapter 1
The last thing Mia ever gave me was her teddy.
One button eye missing, fur matted with grape juice and love.
She pressed it into my palms so hard her tiny knuckles turned white.
Then her chest went still against mine.
The monitor’s steady beep dissolved into a single, endless whine.
I didn’t move for 12 hours.
Not when the nurses pulled the sheet over her face.
Not when my sister Lila showed up, sobbing so hard she could barely stand, wrapping her arms around me like she cared.
I just sat on the cold hospital floor, teddy clutched to my chest, breathing in the last faint traces of Mia’s lavender shampoo.
It was 2 a.m. when my fingers brushed something hard inside the teddy’s belly.
Beneath the worn stuffing, right where Mia loved to hide her tiny treasures.
My hands shook so bad I could barely pick at the frayed seam.
Thread snapped.
Something small and plastic fell into my lap.
A voice recorder.
Tiny, the size of my thumb.
I pressed play, my throat tight enough to crack.
I was ready for her last words.
A mumbled I love you, Mommy.
A giggle she’d hidden there for me to find later.
Instead, Lila’s voice cut through the dark, sharp as a knife.
“The papers are in her baby book. I saw her hide them last week.”
“Once the kid’s gone, the trust pays out. We just need the doctor to sign off on natural causes.”
My blood turned to slush in my veins.
A man’s voice answered.
Jake.
Lila’s boyfriend.
The man who’d carried Mia on his shoulders at her birthday party three weeks prior.
The man I’d called when my husband died, because I thought he was family.
“The doctor is gone,” he said, low and calm.
“Do it now.”
The recording cut to static.
I sat frozen, recorder pressed so hard to my ear it hurt.
The room spun.
Mia’s sudden asthma attack.
The way it came out of nowhere, even though she’d been running through the sprinklers that morning, laughing so loud the neighbors waved.
The doctor saying there was nothing they could do, that these things just happened to kids with mild asthma.
Lila showing up 10 minutes after the monitor flatlined, like she’d been waiting in the parking lot.
It wasn’t an accident.
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My own sister killed my baby.
For money.
