Chapter 7 - Maya
Before Adam could grab my arm, I had the truck door open.
"Rachel, no!" Adam hissed, lunging across the console, but I tore myself from his grip.
I hit the asphalt at a run, crossing the two-lane road without looking for oncoming traffic. The horn of a passing delivery van blared furiously behind me, but the sound didn't penetrate the roaring in my skull. Seven years of suffocated grief, seven years of silent birthdays, seven years of looking at my three children and feeling a hollow void in the center of my soul—all of it collapsed into this single, sunlit afternoon.
"June!" I screamed as I reached the wrought-iron perimeter fence of the schoolyard. "June!"
Several parents turned in alarm. Claire Sterling froze, her head snapping toward the fence. Her face, beneath the designer sunglasses, went utterly bloodless.
The little girl paused, looking around in bewilderment. "Mommy? Is someone calling me?"
"Get in the car, Maya. Now," Claire said, her voice sharp, frantic, and laced with panic. She grabbed the girl’s arm with enough force to pull her off balance.
"Hey!" I shouted, gripping the black iron bars of the fence. "Let go of her! June!"
The little girl looked directly at me through the bars. Her hazel eyes widened. For a second, our gazes locked across thirty feet of green lawn. There was no recognition in her eyes—how could there be?—but there was a deep, startled stillness.
"Who are you?" Maya asked, her voice small and sweet.
"Rachel, stop!" Adam arrived behind me, wrapping his thick arms around my chest, pulling me backward off the fence. "Rachel, look at the cameras! Look at the guards!"
Two private security guards in gray uniforms were already jogging across the lawn toward the gate, hands resting on their utility belts.
Claire Sterling didn't wait for them. She practically lifted Maya into the back seat of a black Range Rover idling by the curb, slammed the door, jumped into the passenger side, and screamed at the private chauffeur. The SUV peeled away from the sidewalk, tires screeching against the asphalt, leaving a haze of blue exhaust in the pristine air.
"Ma'am, step back from the gate!" the lead security guard yelled, pointing an authoritative finger at me. "Back away right now or you'll be detained for trespassing and harassment!"
"That's my daughter!" I screamed through the bars, tears streaming down my face, my throat raw. "That woman stole my daughter! Look at her face! Look at my face!"
"Rachel, come on, please," Adam begged, dragging me toward our truck as parents pulled their children back, whispering and reaching for their phones. "If they arrest us now, we lose everything! Think of Caleb! Think of Nora and Tess!"
The mention of our three children at home snapped the wire in my head.
I let Adam pull me across the street and shove me into the passenger seat. He threw the truck into reverse, swung around, and sped away from the school before the security guards could cross the road to note our license plate.
I collapsed against the passenger door, sobbing so violently that my ribs ached.
"She has Tess's freckle," I wept into my hands. "She has Nora's hair. Adam, she’s our baby. They named her Maya."
Adam drove with one hand white-knuckling the steering wheel, his jaw clenched so tightly a muscle twitched in his cheek. With his other hand, he reached out and took mine, squeezing until the bones cracked.
May you like
"She’s our daughter," Adam said, his voice flat, icy, and deadlier than I had ever heard it. "And Victor Sterling is going to pay for every single day he stole from us."
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