It Was Never a Gift

Catching her in the hospital will make it effortless.

Adele read it three times.

What broke something in her was not the plan to steal her shares; she had known, by then, exactly what her family was willing to do for money.

It was the phrase catching her in the hospital. It was the discovery that her most vulnerable hour — the hours after she brought her son into the world, sore and drugged and cracked wide open with love and fear — had not been an opportunity her family stumbled into.

It had been chosen.

Scheduled.