The Girl in the Mirror(71)

“Something’s wrong,” I say. “I can’t rouse her.”

Wind is rushing in my ears. The room darkens. I pull back Esther’s wrap, push up her gown to expose her tiny chest. Her rib cage is distorted, like she’s straining for air. Each breath she takes, she makes that noise.

It’s not contentment. It’s her last-ditch effort to breathe.

“Ring the bell!” I cry. “Get a doctor!”



The room is full of people. Colton is holding me. I want to go to my baby, but there are too many people in the way.

“What’s happening to her? Let me go to her!”

“No, Summer, you must stay back,” says my uncle. “Let the doctors take care of her.”

I catch glimpses of Esther on a table. Naked, something being forced into her mouth, medical gear all over her. No one is talking to me. I can’t understand half of what they’re saying, but words jump out. Acute. Distress. Prematurity.

A nurse approaches. “Your baby is having trouble breathing, Summer,” she says evenly. “It would help us if you could be precise about her due date. We have on the file that she was thirty-eight weeks, but she seems like a younger baby. Are you sure about your dates?”

“I thought you knew! She’s only thirty-three weeks!” I say. “Is that why she’s in trouble?”

The nurse is distractingly pretty, her eyes heavy with kohl. I glance at her name badge. Nandini Reddy. I don’t think Summer knew a Nandini, but the way this woman is looking at me—

“Oh my God, Summer, what are you doing?” she says. “Thirty-three weeks? Why isn’t she in the neonatal unit? What’s got into you? First Skybird, and now you have a thirty-three-weeker and you don’t make sure we admit her to the unit? How could you not realize this could happen?”

I have to go on the offensive here. I draw myself up. “I just gave birth, Nandini!”

“Nandini?” she repeats. “You’re calling me Nandini?”

She steps forward and places both of her hands on my face. This is someone who knows me well. Very well.

“I don’t understand what’s happened to you, my friend,” she says. “Your baby will be fine, but she needs to be in the unit. We’ll call you when she’s stabilized.”

She and the other doctors and nurses wheel Esther out of the room.



Colton is kind to me. He offers to phone Adam, to go and get Adam. But I can’t let go of him. I don’t care that he’s been Francine’s lover, that his friendliness might be fake. Hugging him is like hugging my dad, and right now I miss my dad. If Ridge were here, he would tell me what to do.

Nandini will be telling everyone in the neonatal unit, “Summer didn’t recognize me.” All it takes is for someone to say, “You know she has a twin? Are you sure it wasn’t her twin?”

Even if nobody says this, in the neonatal unit, I’ll be surrounded by dear friends I’ve never met. Doctors and nurses talking medical talk, expecting me to understand.

It’s impossible.

Yet I have to go there. There is no excuse. My baby is there. My sick baby.

There’s a taxi rank right outside the hospital. I can whip home, grab my passport, head to the airport. I can’t bear to lose Esther, but I know that I already have. She’ll probably be fine—the doctors weren’t panicking just now—but once they decide I’m a murderer, I won’t be allowed to see my daughter. It’s all over.

If I don’t go into the unit, they’ll still guess. Why would Summer stay away from her baby? People will be curious. People will speculate. Someone will figure it out.

My choice now is to run away or face my undoing.

I won’t have money. Even if I persuade Uncle Colton to leave the papers behind, Adam hasn’t signed them yet, and in any case, the money’s not coming into my bank account. It’s going to Romain Travel, because Adam calls the shots in this marriage. A while ago that seemed worth getting upset about. Now I don’t care.

“Shall I call your brother?” asks Colton. “Tell him that Esther’s unwell?”

“No,” I mutter. I pull out my phone and refresh my emails, but there’s nothing from Ben. A sob escapes me at this reprieve. I’m losing everything here, but the last straw is my brother’s betrayal.

“She’s going to be okay, sweetie,” my uncle says. “They said she would be fine. I’ll stay here with you until they tell you that you can see her.”

“Thanks,” I say, “but I need to be alone right now.”

Colton makes a few more useless offers of help and then slips away.

This is my last chance. I need to make a break for freedom.

I slip into a chair and scroll through the N section of Summer’s phone contacts. There is no Nandini Reddy, no Nandini at all. But there is a Nina Reddy. The nurse who kept begging Summer not to use Skybird as her midwife. I had pictured a petite blonde, Russian or Spanish, but when I blow up her profile pic, I see the pretty face framed with black hair, the thick eyeliner. It’s her. Nandini is Nina.

I find Nina’s emails in the trash on my phone. What once seemed rude now strikes me as the confident directness of an intimate friend. Although I deleted all her emails and blocked her texts, Nina’s words got through to me. I knew Skybird was a menace. If I had gone through with the home birth, where would Esther be right now? I should have thanked Nina for her warnings.