Chapter 5 - Kayla
I didn't sleep.
I sat in the armchair by the front window with the door bolted and the porch light burning and my phone in my lap. Renee slept on the couch with one arm across both kids, and Grace slept in the bassinet we'd hauled out of the hall closet — the same one both my grandchildren had slept in as newborns.
At four in the morning Renee's phone lit up on the coffee table. She was sitting up before the second buzz.
She read it, eased herself off the couch so she wouldn't wake the children, and came over to my chair.
"Kayla's asking for me," she said.
"Now?"
"They moved her to the hospital. They say she's stable, but she's asking." Renee looked at the bassinet. "She's asking about Grace."
"Then go."
"I'm not leaving you here alone."
"There is a police car in my driveway, Renee. Go."
She looked at me a moment. Then she pulled on her jacket, leaned down, and kissed the top of my head — the way she used to when she was little and I was the one in the chair — and left.
I sat with the baby until the sky went gray. Grace slept through every bit of it. Small and calm, the way newborns are, like the world hasn't told them anything yet.
Renee came back a little after seven-thirty. She dropped into a chair at the kitchen table and I put a cup of coffee in front of her and she wrapped both hands around it and didn't talk for almost a full minute.
"How is she?" I asked.
"Her body's going to heal." Renee stared into the cup. "The rest of it's going to take a lot longer."
"Did she talk to you?"
"For two hours." She set the mug down. "Mom, she was seventeen when she met him. Seventeen. He told her he loved her. Told her he'd take care of everything. She had no parents in the picture, no money, no place to sleep that week." Renee's throat worked. "By the time she figured out what he actually was, she was already living in that house, and he had her name on the lease and her ID locked in his safe."
I sat down across from her.
"She told me she tried to run once. About eight months ago." Renee's voice went flat and careful, the way people talk when they're carrying something heavy across a room and trying not to spill it. "He found her by that same night. After that he took her phone. Took her shoes. Told her if she tried it again, she'd never see the baby."
"She wasn't even showing yet eight months ago."
"He said it anyway. He already had the whole thing planned." Renee looked up. "She told me she started praying that somebody would just notice. That somebody would drive past that house and feel like something was wrong. She said she'd stand at the front window and wait."
I thought about my daughter driving up and down strange streets for three days, staring at houses.
"She saw you," I said.
Renee nodded. "She waved a dish towel at the glass. One time. Fast. She said she almost didn't, because she was sure he was watching her from the driveway." Renee's eyes filled. "And I almost didn't stop. I thought it was nothing. I thought I was just seeing what I wanted to see because I was exhausted."
"But you stopped."
"I stopped."
We sat with that.
"She wants Grace back," Renee said. "The second she's strong enough. She wants to raise her."
"Can she?"
"Marsh thinks so. There's a program — housing, a caseworker, legal protection, the whole thing. Kayla qualifies for all of it." Renee picked the mug back up. "But we have to get through the hearing first. And Pryce's lawyer is going to try to grab Grace before we ever get in that room."
"So what do we do?"
Renee looked at me steady.
"Marsh says there's a witness. Somebody who worked for Pryce for years. Somebody who kept records."
"Records of what?"
"Everything. Names. Dates. Money that moved. The other women." She paused. "Marsh says if this witness gets on the stand, Pryce doesn't just lose Grace. He loses the rest of his life."
"Then why has this person stayed quiet all this time?"
Renee was quiet a moment.
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"Because Pryce knows which school her kids walk to every morning," she said.
The coffee between us went cold.
