The Flower That Grew from Ashes novel Chapter 4

Why?

Why would he marry a woman only to secretly tie her tubes?-

Why make her believe she was barren, only to personally murder her child the moment she finally managed to conceive?

What did he want?

The questions coiled around her spine like a freezing snake.

"Hackett," Annelise called out just as he started toward the door.

He stopped and looked back.

She wanted to ask. She wanted to hurl every single word she had heard in that operating room right into his face.

But she swallowed it all down.

"Can you stay with me tonight?" she asked, her voice as fragile as a falling feather.

Hackett's footsteps paused for a fraction of a second.

"I don't think I can tonight," he said, an apologetic tone lacing his words, though his eyes were already darting back toward the hallway. "There's an emergency in the ER I need to handle. You get some rest. I'll have Harriet come keep you company."

Annelise nodded and said nothing more.

Hackett walked to the door and pulled it open. Right at that moment, the phone in his pocket buzzed.

He glanced at the caller ID and answered it immediately, keeping his voice extremely low.

But the hospital room was so quiet that every single syllable drifted clearly into Annelise's ears.

"Yeah, I'm on my way."

"Don't panic. Take his temperature first. Use a cold compress, I'll pick up some fever patches on the way."

"Manuel, be a good boy. Let Mommy hold you, Dad..."

Hackett froze, as if suddenly realizing where he was, swiftly dropping his voice to a whisper and stepping sideways into the corridor.

But Annelise had already heard it—that slip of the tongue, and the gentle woman's voice coming through the receiver.

She would never mistake that voice. It was Clarissa Sherwood, her best friend, the woman she had treated like a sister, and the widow of Elias Lehman, Hackett's late older brother.

Manuel? Whose child was that?

Annelise lay in her hospital bed, her post-op abdomen throbbing in waves, feeling as though her body were weeping for the child that had been ripped away from her. Meanwhile, her husband was rushing off with his phone in hand, hurrying to take care of another woman's child.

No. Maybe it wasn't "another woman's child."

Maybe, it was his.

Annelise slowly closed her eyes. The post-op room was dead silent, so quiet she could hear the night wind sweeping through the trees outside the window.

She rested a hand over her hollow stomach. There was nothing left inside.

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