Serena was conscious of her gun hidden in her shoulder holster under her jacket, but she left it where it was. At the threshold, she hesitated. The house was mostly stripped, but she saw an old television in the family room, tuned to the local network. She heard the breathless voice of Blair Rowe and saw the crawl for breaking news scroll across the bottom of the screen.
POLICE RECOVER CHILD'S BODY NEAR CEMETERY.
The news explained the frantic rush to escape. They knew about the search. They knew what the police were going to find in the woods. After that, it wouldn't be long before someone wound up at their doorstep.
Serena walked silently into the house. The main floor was empty, but upstairs she heard heavy, panicked footsteps in the hallway. As she watched, a burly, bearded man thundered down the stairs and froze in horrified surprise when he saw Serena.
Her heart lurched. The man carried a baby wrapped in a blanket in his arms. She couldn't see the baby's face, which was covered by a hood, but she knew who it was. She had suspected all along what she would find inside the house, even though she hadn't allowed herself to believe it could end this way. The baby's hand reached up out of the folds of the blanket and tugged at the man's beard. The hood slipped off her head, and Serena saw her blonde curls. Her beautiful face with its wide eyes and toothy grin. Valerie's child.
It was Callie Glenn. Alive. Safe.
Serena put up her hands to steady him. 'Stay right there, OK? Let's be calm about this. No one wants anyone getting hurt.'
He didn't move. He didn't say anything.
'Where's Kasey?' Serena asked Bruce Kennedy.
Bruce wilted on to the steps. His head burrowed into his thick neck. 'She's out.'
'Did you two really think you could get away with this?'
Bruce put out a thick finger, and Callie grabbed it and put it in her mouth. His eyes welled with tears. 'I don't know what I was thinking. You have to believe me, I never thought any of it would go this far. But when I saw the news, I knew you'd be coming for us. I knew you'd want to take her back.'
Serena gestured toward the sofa. 'Why don't you come downstairs, Bruce? Tell me about it. Tell me why you and Kasey did this.'
Bruce held Callie like a treasure as he came downstairs. She was a tiny bundle in his huge arms. His eyes shot to the open door behind Serena, and she shook her head.
'Please don't try that,' she told him. 'There are police outside. All you would do by running is put her in danger.'
'I'd never do that.'
He sat on a corner of the sofa, and Serena sat opposite him. She couldn't take her eyes off Callie. The little girl was even more beautiful than she had dreamed. All she had seen until now was a photograph, and for days she had steeled herself to the eventual reality of finding her dead. Or never finding her at all. And here she was, perfect and gorgeous. She wanted to take her in her arms and never let go. She was so happy that she thought her heart would break, and she realized that she was crying herself. The reality of seeing Callie hit her harder than she could ever have imagined.
'Isn't she wonderful?' Bruce said.
Serena nodded mutely. She couldn't speak.
'You can't take her away from us,' he said.
'Tell me what happened,' Serena told him, her voice cracking. 'For God's sake, why would you two do something like this?'
Bruce sank back into the sofa with Callie on his chest. 'Our own little boy never had a chance.'
'Your son? He was the baby we found in the woods?'
'Yes.'
'What was wrong?'
'Jack's lungs didn't develop properly.' Bruce shook his head. 'That poor little boy, he would turn blue fighting for breath. As he grew, he struggled more and more.'
'Did you take him to the doctor?' Serena asked.
'Of course we did. They ran tests and scans and put him through hell and all they could say was the defects were too severe. Surgery would have killed him, and he was going to die without it. It was just a matter of time. We didn't want him to die in a hospital. We wanted him home with us. At least we could make him comfortable as long as we could.'
'I'm sorry.'
'Kasey was so depressed. She never slept. She would have killed herself to make that baby healthy, and she thought it was her fault that we were losing him.'
'You're talking about severe congenital defects. It's nobody's fault.'
'I know, but Kasey thought God had abandoned us. She was desperate.'
Serena watched the frantic longing in Bruce's face. She could imagine their minds fraying after months of their child slowly getting worse. 'What about Callie?' she asked.
Bruce stared at the girl in his arms. 'Regan put the idea in Kasey's head. She was our nurse at the hospital. She helped us all year. She came by our house every day. I don't think Kasey would have survived without her.'
'What did she tell you?'
'Jack was dying,' he said with a sigh. 'There was nothing we could do. Regan told us how unfair it was and how we'd been cheated.
She said we deserved to have a baby. She told us about Marcus Glenn and how he didn't love Callie because she wasn't his, and how he and his wife were both cheating on each other, and how awful it would be for a baby to grow up in that household. She said it was like God had made a mistake that night and switched the babies. That's what it was — a mistake. They had a wonderful, healthy little girl, and we were forced to live through the agony of watching our sweet little boy fighting and fighting and not making it. Don't you see? It wasn't supposed to be that way.'
Serena grew angry, imagining Regan preying on their vulnerable souls, using them as pawns in her own game of revenge against Marcus and Valerie Glenn. 'What happened?' she asked.
'Jack finally passed away last week,' Bruce said. 'We lost him.'
'What did you do?'
'I thought, if it really was God's mistake, I could put it right, you know? So I had the idea that I should bury him with the Glenn family. I wanted him to be protected. Taken care of. I took him with me that night and I buried him near the cemetery. He was finally at peace. He was where he was meant to be all along.'
Serena closed her eyes. 'What about Kasey?'
'Kasey went to get Callie,' Bruce said. 'Regan told us it was the only way. She offered to help us — she had a key to the doctor's house. She said we had to go rescue her.'
Serena stared at Callie in Bruce's arms. The little girl knew none of the heartache around her. None of the sorrow and desperation that had become focused on her.
'Bruce, may I hold her?'
She waited, holding her breath, to see what he would do. To see if he could give her up and let her out of his hands. Somewhere in his mind, he had to know that he would never get her back. She would never be in his arms again. She was someone else's child. Their child was in the ground.
Bruce sobbed. He laid a soft hand on the girl's curls. 'I can't lose another baby,' he murmured.
'I understand. Just let me hold her for a while.'
Give her to me. Let her go back home to her real parents. Grieve for your son.
Bruce held up Callie in his outstretched arms. She giggled as he held her. His mouth contorted in an awful, wounded frown, even as he tried to smile for the girl's benefit. Serena got up and reached out her hands. Her fingers touched the child's blanket, and her hands took hold of her soft sides. For an instant, Bruce didn't let go. He clung to Callie, as if the moment of parting were too painful to bear. Then, with gentle pressure, Serena took the girl into her own arms and folded her up against her chest.
Bruce watched the two of them sit down and then buried his face in his hands. He was grieving for both babies now. One dead, one alive, but both of them out of his life. Serena knew he loved Callie, even if she wasn't his own.
'Tell me what happened that night, Bruce. What did Kasey do?'