Her face twisted with the sour humiliation of being shut down. She sat in silence for a moment, then snatched up her purse.
As she passed me, her voice dropped to something frigid.
"You won't hold that seat as Mrs. Delgado for long."
That night, I was taken by strangers. They placed bets with cash, wagering on how many swings of a bat it would take to kill a three-month-old baby still inside its mother.
I called Bertram ninety-nine times. Not once did he answer. On the hundredth call, it finally connected, and I told him our baby was gone.
Silence on his end. Then: "I'm sorry, Prue. I swear I'll find whoever did this and make them pay. Just hold on."
He told me not to hang up. He was on his way.
But the very next second, a woman's tearful whimper came through the phone. It was Bertram's foster sister, Alexis Pruitt.
"Bertram, my ankle hurts so bad... ah..."
"Alexis!"
That single cry of alarm did something I'd never witnessed in ten years of marriage. It shattered the composure of a man who never lost his cool, and it stopped my heart dead.
In a decade together, I had never once heard Bertram Delgado sound panicked.