Chapter 1 - The Suitcase
The suitcase hit Briar before I understood my mother had thrown it.
It slammed into the side of the hospital bed, bounced hard, and clipped Briar across the ribs and swollen belly.
She screamed.
"Briar!"
I caught her shoulders as she folded around our baby. My mother, Maris, stood three feet away with one hand still raised, chest heaving, fury burning through her face.
"You should have stayed out of things that don't concern you," she snapped.
The clipboard outside the room hit the floor.
Through the glass, Nurse Colleen Hargrove stared at us. Then Briar gave another broken cry.
Colleen moved instantly. She slammed the blue emergency button.
"Code Gold, Room Four! Abdominal trauma to a patient in active labor! Security now!"
Two nurses rushed in. A resident pulled me away from the bed while another strapped monitors across Briar's stomach.
"The baby?" I demanded. "Tell me about the baby."
"We need room, Mr. Sterling."
Maris reached for the suitcase.
Colleen stepped between her and the bed. "Don't touch anything."
"That belongs to me."
"Not anymore."
Security entered just as the suitcase slid off the mattress and burst open.
Folders scattered across the floor.
An old photograph landed faceup near my shoe.
I bent automatically.
The man in the picture was thinner, older, with gray in his beard.
But I knew his eyes.
My father.
Henry Sterling had supposedly drowned eleven years ago.
The photograph was dated six weeks earlier.
I looked at my mother.
For the first time in my life, Maris Sterling looked afraid.
Then a thick medical file slid from the suitcase.
Across the front, in black block letters, someone had written:
HENRY STERLING - CURRENT PATIENT.
May you like
And underneath it was the name of a private care facility only forty miles away.
My dead father was alive.
