So while I carried Beckett’s daughter, another woman had been carrying his child across town, and the two of them had waited, on a schedule, for me to die and clear the way.

A wave of nausea rolled up through me, and I breathed through it, slow and even, and did not move.

I did not scream.

I did not throw back the blanket and fling open the door.

Instead, under the pillow, out of their sight, I slid my hand to my phone, unlocked it by feel, and pressed record.

That was the first mistake Beckett made that night: he assumed a sleeping woman was a silent one.

It was Larissa’s face I could not stop seeing, in the dark, while the recording ran.