CHAPTER 12
Shaundra didn’t even have a word in her vocabulary to describe the sheer, naked terror she felt when she arrived back at the mansion, racing inside clutching the small bag from the pharmacy containing the medicine she desperately hoped would lower her baby’s fever and finding nobody there.
She ran from room to room, screaming for Samia, but there was no answer.
All around her was the chaos of her impromptu packing. Heaps of clothes, shoes and books. The disarray made her even more frantic, as if the untidiness impinged on her ability to think straight.
She began shouting, “Benji! Benji! Benji!” even though she knew that there was no way that her baby could answer, but that precious name on her lips felt right.
So many possibilities coursed through her mind. All of them awful. Had Nathanael lost his damn mind, enraged after their argument, and done something drastic? Had he hurt their son?
What if he’d decided to take him away somewhere? Drop him off without identification so they couldn’t trace him back to her at one of those emergency baby adoption centers. Or leave him on the steps of a church.
The idea was so ridiculous, so unbelievable, that she began to laugh hysterically, and then, recognizing how insane she sounded to her own ears, struggled to get a grip on herself.
There had to be some explanation.
She looked around and then realized she’d left her purse with her phone in the car. So she ran downstairs into the kitchen and snatched up the landline, dialing Jacyn’s number, thanking God she had a gift with figures. These days, nobody knew anyone’s number, they just hit a couple of buttons. But Shaundra had a good memory, and now, when she needed it, it was there for her.
The second Jacyn answered, Shaundra asked frantically, “Is Nathanael there? Him and my Benji? Did he come over to visit Alex?”
Jacyn’s voice was confused. “Nathanael? Was he supposed to visit? I don’t recall—”
“Is. He. There?” she demanded. She could hear her voice, shrill in her own ears. She knew she sounded like a lunatic.
Jacyn’s voice was puzzled, but soothing. “No, hon. Alex is sitting right here next to me, playing with Alicyn and Xander.” Xander was Naisha and William’s son, born three months before Benji. “Is everything—?”
She hung up, running for the car, panting. She grabbed up her purse and shook out its contents, spilling them all over the seat, sifting frantically through the rubble of wallet, coins, makeup, receipts and loose change until she found her phone.
There were five missed calls. All of them from Nathanael. She remembered with a groan that she had been so mad at him after this morning’s fight that she’d silenced her phone, not wanting to talk to him—or anyone else—for a while.
Her hands were slippery with sweat as she struggled to dial and listened as the phone rang and rang. And rang.
Then it went to voicemail.
She cursed aloud in frustration. What kind of game was he playing? And why did he have her baby?
She dialed Samia’s number next and almost sobbed in relief when she immediately answered. “Madame!”
“Where is he, Samia? What happened?”
Unnerved by the note of desperation in Shaundra’s voice, Samia began to stutter. “Monsieur Michiels, he—”
“Just tell me where you are!”
“In Aix. The Saint Nicholas Children’s Hospital. The doctors—”
Shaundra launched herself into the car and kicked it into gear, skating down the driveway, struggling to control her shaking hands. She came too close to the gate on the passenger side and felt the grating reverb shake the car as she gouged a deep scratch along the car’s length.
She didn’t even stop. They were far enough out of Aix itself that on a good day, the trip into the city took 40 minutes. Shaundra made it in 25.
She left the car running at the entrance, ignoring the shouts of the irate security guard who demanded that she remove it at once. The sound of her heels were like gunshots as she raced inside. Past reception, past registration, never mind the woman at the desk had got up and begun to pursue her.
Catch me if you can,she thought. She called Samia again, demanding directions, and navigated, as she was told, into the inner workings of the emergency care facility. Immediately, she was greeted with the sound of children; screaming, moaning, howling in pain and fear.
She felt a dampness on her chest as her nursing mother’s breasts instinctively responded to the wail of a baby—even a baby who wasn’t her own—by leaking a little milk.
Onward, to the far end, where she spotted the stark white of Samia’s flowing hijab, like a beckoning flag. And next to her, standing a full head above the others in the room, was Nathanael.