He had wanted my money.

That, at least, was a motive as old as money itself.

But she had stood in my home and touched my unborn daughter through my own skin while carrying her replacement across town, and smiled at me, and meant every second of it as a private joke.

That was a different kind of cold, and it was the thing that finished, in one stroke, whatever part of me had still been capable of hoping I’d misheard.

I had not misheard.