Part 2

His eyes narrowed at the plural, but a nurse walked in just then. Dr. Benson explained, with a calm I’m still grateful for, that any document unrelated to medical care would have to be removed. Garrett picked up his pen but left the envelope and the check.

“I’ll be back at nine tomorrow. Don’t make me waste any more time.”

He walked out without asking if I was in pain. When the door closed, I asked the staff to restrict his visits until further notice. The nurse made a note, and I took photographs of the documents with my phone. Inside the envelope was another page, folded behind the agreement: a payment authorization to Beacon Communications for $155,000. I recognized Garrett’s signature and Kendra’s. I had seen that agency’s name in a procurement report months earlier.

Then I heard Dr. Benson ask for another transducer. On the screen appeared two heart rate tracings, two small lives Garrett had just called a problem. The second heartbeat was racing. A brief alarm made me squeeze Laura’s hand.

“The second baby needs us to keep moving,” she explained. “We’re monitoring both of them closely.”

I remembered the last ultrasound image, tucked behind my ID: a girl and a boy. I had wanted to tell Garrett their names over a quiet dinner. Now I understood that his silence had ended up protecting them from him.

I asked for my phone again and dialed a number I had avoided for almost two years.

“Dad,” I said when he answered from Savannah. “It’s Brooke. I’m having your grandchildren. Both of them. I need you to come, but not so you can decide things for me.”

My father, Walter Prescott, owner of the freight company where my husband worked, was silent for a moment.

“Tell me what hospital you’re in.”

Before I could answer, I noticed a handwritten note on the authorization page: Urgent. Release before Friday. It was Thursday. And beneath that note was a bank reference number I had seen on the statements for our own household account.

“What reference number?” my father asked over the phone.

“I don’t know yet. First I’m going to give birth. Then I’ll explain.”

I hung up when Laura asked me to put the phone down. My daughter was born at 11:17 that night, with a wrinkled forehead and the most indignant cry I have ever heard. I named her Harper. I held her for a few seconds before the pediatrician examined her, and her tiny hand closed around my finger. I wanted to promise her that no one would ever again confuse her worth with a man’s last name.