Chapter 3 - The Empty Nursery
In the affluent suburb of Upper Arlington, Ohio, Derek Vance stood in the center of the master bedroom, holding a lukewarm cup of espresso. The bed was unmade on his side; mine was still neatly smoothed from the previous morning.
His phone buzzed in his hand for the twentieth time that morning. It was his mother, Evelyn.
He swiped to answer, adjusting the collar of his crisp linen shirt. "Mom. Yeah, I'm here."
"Derek, darling, I'm downstairs," Evelyn’s voice boomed through the speaker, crisp and demanding. "The gate is locked. Why hasn't Nina opened the garage? And where is the coffee service for our morning committee review?"
Derek pinched the bridge of his nose, feeling a low, sharp headache pulse behind his eyes. "The gate is unlocked now, Mom. Just come in. Nina... isn't here."
"Not there?" Evelyn paused, the sound of her heavy car door slamming echoing through the line. "What do you mean she isn't there? She's thirty-nine weeks pregnant. Where could she possibly be?"
"I don't know," Derek snapped, his composure slipping for the first time since the previous evening. "She had some kind of episode yesterday before I left for the Miller dinner. She was complaining about contractions again."
Three minutes later, Evelyn Vance swept into the kitchen, her designer sunglasses pushed up onto her perfectly coiffed hair. She stopped short at the kitchen island.
"Derek, what is this?"
She was pointing at the marble counter.
The fifteen dollars was gone—I had taken it—but the platinum band with the two-carat solitaire diamond sat precisely in the center of the dark gray veins of the stone. Beside it lay the master key fob to the house and the spare key to Derek’s Audi.
Derek walked over, staring down at the ring. The sight of it sent an unfamiliar, cold prickle down his neck.
"She left it last night," he muttered, reaching down to pick up the ring. It felt small and cold in his palm. "She was being dramatic. I gave her cab fare for Riverside because I had the Miller deal to close."
Evelyn stared at her son, her eyes wide with sudden disbelief. "You gave your nine-months-pregnant wife cab money and left for dinner?"
"It was a ten-million-dollar account, Mom!" Derek barked, turning to face her, his chest heaving. "She does this all the time now. Ever since the third trimester started, every little thing is a crisis. She's probably at her friend Sarah's house trying to make me feel guilty. She'll be back by noon when she realizes she can't access the joint account."
"Derek," Evelyn said softly, her usual stern demeanor cracking into real concern as she stepped past him toward the hallway. "Have you checked the nursery?"
Derek followed his mother down the long, carpeted hall to the room they had painted pale sage green two months ago. He hadn't spent more than five minutes total in that room since they moved the furniture in.
Evelyn opened the door.
The crib was empty, its white bars gleaming under the window light. But it wasn't just empty—it was stripped. The custom-knitted blanket Nina’s late grandmother had made was gone. The small sterling silver rattle Derek's father had gifted them was gone. And on the dresser, right next to the white noise machine, lay a single sheet of paper from a legal pad.
Derek stepped past his mother, his leather shoes heavy against the hardwood floor. He picked up the paper.
Written in Nina's neat, precise handwriting were just six words:
Do not look for us, Derek.
"Us?" Evelyn whispered, reading over his shoulder. "Derek... she had the baby."
Derek's hand tightened on the paper until the thick bond crumpled in his fist. He pulled out his phone again, dialing the director of admissions at Riverside Methodist Hospital—a man who sat on the board of his father's investment firm.
"Arthur, it's Derek Vance," he said, his voice clipped and trembling with a dangerous mixture of humiliation and fury. "I need you to check the labor and delivery registry right now. Nina Vance. N-I-N-A."
He listened to the silence on the other end of the line, the sound of keyboard keys clicking rhythmically.
"Derek?" Arthur's voice returned, hesitant. "I'm looking at the logs for the last twenty-four hours. We have no record of Nina being admitted. We don't even have an emergency room visit under her name."
Derek lowered the phone slowly, his breathing shallow.
May you like
She wasn't at Riverside. She wasn't at a local hotel. And as he glanced out the nursery window down the quiet, manicured street of their suburban enclave, he finally realized that the silence in his five-thousand-square-foot home wasn't temporary.
She was gone. And she had taken his heir with her.
