He Let Our Daughter Die to Save His Mistress Chapter 05

He Let Our Daughter Die to Save His Mistress Chapter 05

They had it staged in the front hall like a courtroom.

Sienna in an armchair with a hot water bottle and swollen eyes. The bought doctor by the window, Royce by the stairs with his hands folded. Two of the security men from the gatehouse.

“Grace.” Sienna’s voice was a wet whisper. “I know you hate me. I know you don’t think I’m good/enough to raise Lily. But how could you do this to a baby? That was Damien’s flesh and blood.”

“Was it?” I said.

The room went still for exactly one heartbeat.

She recovered fast, I’ll give her that. She started to sob into her hands, and Damien turned to me with a look I

have never seen on a human face.

“Bring it,” he told Royce.

Royce came back with a glass of water and two white tablets in a paper cup.

I knew what they were. Any surgical resident would. Misoprostol, or something close enough – the drug that empties a uterus, taken alone, without supervision, without a doctor who cares whether you bleed out on a

marble floor.

“Damien,” I said. “Don’t.”

“You took her child,” he said. “So you don’t get to have one. Ever. It’s simple. It’s the only fair thing that’s happened in this house in seven years.”

Two of them held my arms. Royce held my jaw.

I fought. I want that on the record. I bit, and I kicked, and I screamed my daughter’s name, and I lost, because

I am a hundred and eighteen pounds and there were four of them.

Eleven minutes later the cramping started. I went down onto the marble on my side and I curled around myself and the blood came, and came, and I remember thinking, this is what she felt. My baby felt worse than this and she was six and she was alone.

Damien stood over me. He didn’t call anyone. He didn’t kneel.

“Now you’ll listen,” he said. “Lily is Sienna’s from today. Are we clear?”

And through the noise in my ears, I heard Sienna’s voice, gentle, thoughtful, aimed at the bought doctor.

“Doctor be honest with me. Will I be able to conceive again? After what happened?”

He cleared his throat. “Yes. Provided the environment is clean. Emotionally and physically. Grief objects, ases, urns, human remains in the home – for a woman in your state, that’s toxic. It has to all go.”

Damien’s head came up. “What ashes?”

“There’s a box in her closet,” Royce said pleasantly. “I saw it when I brought her in from the garden.”

I got up on one elbow with blood soaking through my dress.

“No,” I said. “No – I’ll take it out myself, right now, I’ll take it off the property, just don’t let him touch it-”

“You see?” Sienna was on her knees in front of me before I could finish, hands clasped, tears streaming, playing to the whole room. “She’ll only smuggle it back in. Grace, please. You already took one child from me Do you want to take the next one too? I’ll leave, I’ll go, just – please, be reasonable, just this once.”

Damien’s face turned to stone.

“Get it,” he said. “All of it. And empty the fireplace in the guest room while you’re at it, God knows what she

was burning in there.”

They brought the box down.

They brought down the little metal scoop from the guest room grate too, the one with our wedding album in it, our photographs, seven years of my handwriting.

And in front of me, on my own front hall floor, they poured my daughter into a black contractor bag and shoveled the ashes of everything else in on top of her, and shook it, so it all mixed together, so no one could

ever separate her out again.

I heard the sound. I will hear it until I die: the soft, dry rush of my child sliding into plastic.

Something in my chest tore open, and what came out of my mouth wasn’t a word.

Sienna leaned against Damien’s shoulder and murmured, so sweetly, “It’s handled now. But if she tries

something again while I’m recovering, I-”

He looked down at me lying in my own blood.

“Take her outside,” he said. “Tie her hands. She stays in the yard tonight.”