"Ask," I said.
She pulled a small notebook from her jacket.
"The inheritance documents your mother removed from the scene β do you know what they contained?"
"My grandmother's trust.
She passed four months ago.
The trust becomes permanent when my daughter is born and named as a beneficiary.
My grandmother wrote it that way specifically."
Detective Reyes wrote something down.
"And if your daughter were not born alive?"
The word landed like a stone in still water.
"The trust reverts," I said.
"To my parents.
And to my sister."
She looked up from the notebook.
She didn't say anything.
She didn't need to.
Daniel stood up from the bed.
"How soon can you move on this?"
"We already have the recording from the minor at the scene," Detective Reyes said.
"We have the bloodwork report.
We're waiting on the lab to identify the exact compound concentration and timeline.
That will tell us how long this was administered and whether the dosage was intentional or escalating."
"It was escalating," I said.
Both of them looked at me.
"The last two weeks I've been exhausted.
Cramping at night.
My doctor thought it was normal third-trimester pressure." I looked at the ceiling.
"It wasn't normal.
I just didn't know what normal was supposed to feel like anymore."
Detective Reyes wrote for a long moment.
Then she closed the notebook.
"Mrs.
Calloway, I want you to focus on your daughter tonight.
We'll handle the rest." She looked at Daniel.
"Don't let anyone from her family into this room without calling me first."
She left.
The door clicked shut behind her.
Daniel came back to the bed and took my hand.
On the monitor, our daughter's heartbeat ticked forward.
Slow.
Steady.
Stubborn.
"She's still fighting," he said.
"She gets that from me."
His hand tightened around mine.
Then my phone lit up on the bedside table.
A message from my sister.
Four words.
*How is she doing?*
Not *I'm sorry.* Not *I didn't mean it.* Not *please forgive me.*
*How is she doing.*
Like she was asking about a neighbor's cat.
Daniel saw it too.
He reached over and turned the phone face-down.
"Don't answer that," he said.
But I already understood something in that moment that I hadn't understood before.
My sister wasn't asking because she was worried.
She was asking because she needed to know if the plan had worked.
The lab results came back the following afternoon.
Dr.
Okafor β the OB who had been monitoring me since the night before β pulled a chair close to my bed and sat down like someone who had practiced delivering difficult news and still hadn't made peace with it.
"The compound we found is misoprostol," she said.
"The concentration in your bloodwork suggests repeated low-dose exposure over approximately ten to fourteen days."
"Ten to fourteen days," I repeated.
"Yes.
This was not a single event."
Daniel was standing by the window.
He didn't turn around.
"Is my daughter going to be okay?" I asked.
"Her heartbeat has strengthened overnight.
We're going to keep you on monitoring for at least forty-eight more hours.
If she remains stable, we're cautiously optimistic." Dr.
Okafor paused.
"But I want to be honest with you.
The fact that you came in when you did β because of what happened at that gathering β may have saved her life.
If you had gone another week without knowing, the outcome could have been very different."
I thought about that.
My sister's boot connecting with my stomach.
The thing that was supposed to finish it instead exposing it.
"Someone made a mistake in their timing," I said.
Dr.
Okafor looked at me carefully.
"That's not my area.
But the detective has a full copy of the report."
She left.
The door had barely closed when Daniel turned from the window.
"Your mother called the nurses' station this morning."
"What did she say?"
"She said she wanted to bring you food.
Home-cooked.
She was very insistent about it."
The air went out of the room.
"She doesn't know we know," I said.
"No." He crossed to the chair beside my bed and sat down.