Chapter 5 - A String Attached to Everything
After Dr. Osei left, Wyatt wheeled me into the NICU. Wren looked impossibly small under the tubes — a machine breathing beside her, wires across her tiny chest. I reached through the incubator and touched one finger to her palm. Her hand closed around it, and I fell apart completely.
"I'm sorry," I said.
Wyatt crouched beside me. "Stop."
"I was right there."
"So was I."
"Everyone was looking at Jasper."
"I know." His voice cracked. "I let her make me think that was normal."
He didn't have to say Dahlia's name. Her influence had been living in our marriage long before either of our children arrived in it. When we found out we were having twins, she'd asked the sexes before she asked whether the babies were healthy. At the gender reveal, blue confetti fell first, and she screamed with joy. When the pink followed a beat later, she clapped twice and announced that "the family name was safe."
Wyatt had rolled his eyes. I'd laughed, awkwardly, the way you do. That was how we'd always handled Dahlia — we turned her cruelty into eccentricity, her control into "tradition," her threats into jokes we could laugh off at dinner.
The Kesslers owned farmland, a string of rental properties, and a packaging company Wyatt's grandfather had built forty years earlier. Dahlia controlled the family trust. She'd paid for our wedding. She'd handed us the down payment on our house. She'd promised Wyatt the company would be his one day.
Every gift came with a string attached. Some were thin enough to ignore. Others were wrapped tight around his throat.
That evening, Dahlia called seventeen times. Wyatt answered the eighteenth and put it on speaker.
"Has the girl stabilized?" she asked.
The girl.
Wyatt's face went completely still. "Her name is Wren."
"I know her name."
"Then use it."
She sighed. "I'm trying to discuss the future."
"Our daughter is having heart surgery."
"Which is precisely why you need to be practical."
I stared at the phone. "What does that mean?"
A pause — she clearly hadn't expected me to be listening. "Elena, you should rest."
"What does practical mean?"
"It means Jasper needs to be protected from instability."
Wyatt stood. "What instability?"
"The hospital bills. Long-term care. Whatever limitations the girl might end up with."
The girl, again. "The trust was designed to preserve the family line," Dahlia went on. "We can't let sentiment drain resources meant for the heir."
Wyatt's face went blank. "Are you saying the trust should pay for Jasper but not Wren?"
"I'm saying exceptional costs need to be evaluated."
"She's your granddaughter."
"And Jasper is the future of the estate."
Wyatt ended the call. Then he turned the phone off entirely.
After a long silence he said, "My mother went over the trust with me last month."
"What did you sign?"
"An acknowledgment. That Jasper would become the primary beneficiary after me."
"And Wren?"
He looked toward the NICU doors. "She wasn't in it."
I felt sick. "You signed something that left our daughter out?"
"I thought it was ceremonial."
"She's been telling you for months that only the boy mattered."
"I thought it was just talk."
May you like
"Because the talk never cost you anything."
He flinched. I hated the words even as I said them. I also meant every one.
