She closed the thread and handed the phone back with a calm more frightening than any scream.

“That little girl could be your daughter.” It wasn’t a question.

I stared at the image until my eyes burned — my father in that hospital room, the attorney by the curtain, Gabriela holding a newborn, everything I’d been kept ignorant of frozen there in digital ink.

“I didn’t know,” I said, barely a rasp.

Chapter 11 — If You Knew

Isabela looked at me with a cold, hollow sadness.