“Three?”
His face opened with pride. “Three sons.”
But upstairs, Evelyn lay pale against the pillows, clutching only two infants to her chest.
When he asked where the third was, she turned her face and let tears slide down her cheeks.
“He was too weak,” she whispered. “He didn’t make it.”
Mr. Harper stared at her.
“The child died?”
She nodded. “They already buried him before dawn.”
For a long moment, he said nothing.
Then he bowed his head like a man swallowing grief because grief was easier than doubt.
“The Lord gives and takes,” he murmured. He touched the heads of the two babies in her arms. “These boys will live. Samuel and Andrew.”
Outside the bedroom, hidden in the hallway shadows, Martha stood frozen.
The child in the woods had just been turned into a ghost.
Three nights passed.
Martha barely slept. Every time she shut her eyes, she saw that broken shack, that tiny face, that old blanket on the floor.
On the fourth night, guilt dragged her back through the woods.
She told herself she was going to bury him.
She told herself she had no other choice.
But when she pushed open the shack door, she heard it.
A weak cry.
So small it barely sounded human.
Martha dropped to her knees.
The baby was alive.
Starving. Cold. Barely moving. But alive.
She scooped him up and held him so tightly he let out a little gasp.
“Oh, honey,” she sobbed. “Oh, no. No. You’re not dying here. Not like this.”
She carried him home hidden beneath her shawl.
That night, she made the only decision that mattered.
If the world wanted him erased, then she would keep him alive in the cracks of it.
