Her Secret Son

by Hannah Mary McKinnon

  I took off my shirt, wiped the box to remove my fingerprints before gently lowering it back into the hole, whispering pathetic-sounding apologies, telling the baby not to worry, that he—she?—would be home soon, that it wouldn’t be long. Once I’d covered it back up with the soaked soil and rearranged the pine needles, I took a few steps back, saw how I’d rendered the grave practically invisible again. That was when I finally acknowledged my tears. This was someone’s child, their tiny, tiny child, left in the ground, abandoned by Tyler, and now by me.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “Someone will come back soon. I promise.”

  My strides became increasingly determined as I walked back to the truck, my spine more rigid and straight as anger coursed through my body, zapping from nerve to nerve, muscle to muscle with the power and speed of a lightning bolt.

  Tyler was going to pay.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  “Pick up,” I yelled into the phone as it rang. “Pick up, pick up, pick up.”

  “Emily Rhodes.”

  “Emily,” I shouted, running through the trees and back to my truck. “Where are you?”

  “Josh, is that you? What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

  “Are you at home? Is Tyler there?”

  “He just got back from the garage—”

  “Listen to me,” I said. “Make an excuse and meet me at the cabin, right now.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Right now. Can you do that?”

  “Josh,” she whispered. “I can’t. Last night—”

  “This isn’t about last night. You have to come to the cabin. Please.”

  “I’m hanging up now—”

  “Don’t. I’ve found out some things about Tyler—”

  “What kind of things?” she said. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’ll be at the cabin in ten minutes. You have to come,” I shouted, and when she still hesitated I lowered my voice, quietly said, “I need to tell you about what I’ve found. It’s...bad, really bad, but I can’t do it over the phone. Please, please, Emily. Promise me you’ll come.”

  “Yes, yes. I promise,” she said as I jumped into the truck and floored it down the trail, overtaking another car that was already going well over the speed limit, trying to figure out how I’d tell Emily, knowing I’d be tearing her life apart, hoping I’d somehow be able to help her rebuild it whenever she was ready, and if she let me.

  I’d been at the cabin for only sixty seconds when I heard a car coming up the dirt track, and I leaped off the steps, running toward it, yanked open the door before Emily had come to a complete stop, a deluge of rain pounding my skull as I did.

  “What’s going on?” She pulled the keys from the ignition and tossed them in her bag. “Josh, why are you covered in mud? What the hell happened?”

  I looked down at my clothes, forced a mental note somewhere in my mind to throw them—and my shoes—away as soon as I could. There were so many things to think about, so many bases to cover. “Come inside,” I said. “Please, come inside.”

  “You need to tell me what’s going on, right now, Josh, because I shouldn’t be here,” she said, walking into the cabin, crossing her arms over her chest. “Not after what we did. It was a mistake, and if Tyler finds out it’ll kill him—”

  “He’s not who you think he is,” I said, taking a step toward her. “He’s dangerous. He—”

  “What are you talking about?” Emily said, her voice raised. “Is this some kind of mind game? Some crazy attempt to make me leave him for you?”

  “No—”

  “Then tell me what’s going on or I’m leaving, and I swear you’ll never see me again.”

  I rubbed a hand over my face, trying to buy time, realized it didn’t matter if she graced me with a decade. I had to tell her what I’d seen, what I’d found; she needed to know. “Earlier today...I saw Tyler, in your car.”

  She nodded. “I told you. He took it to the garage. So?”

  “I followed him.”

  “You followed Tyler? Why?”

  “Because I thought it was you at first, and I needed to talk to you. He turned up a trail, the one that goes to Monty’s Pond.”

  Her eyes flashed at me. “Monty’s Pond?”

  “Yes. I thought he was meeting someone, I don’t know, a lover, maybe. But when I followed him...” I took a deep breath, pressed my palms over my eyes. “Emily, there’s no easy way of saying this, there really isn’t. Look, he buried something up there—”

  “What—”

  “Not something. Someone.” As I went to grab her hands, she took a step back, her fingers flying toward her mouth. “I saw. It was a baby, Emily. A tiny skeleton in a metal box.”

  “You saw?” She shook her head, let out a moan as her legs buckled, sinking to the floor, her hands clawing at her shirt, pulling and tugging as if she couldn’t get enough air. “No. No.”

  I dropped to my knees, put my arms around her, but she scrambled away. “We need to figure out what to do,” I said, trying to hold her close, calm her down. “Call the police.”

  “The police? No. We can’t.”

  “Emily, please, we have to. What if...what if it’s Hunter—”

  “It isn’t,” Emily whispered, getting up slowly, her eyes empty. “It’s not my son.”

  “But we have to make sure—”

  “I am sure,” she said.

  “How?” I frowned, pushed myself up, legs unsteady, but she wouldn’t answer. “Emily?” I said, the panic making my voice boom around the cabin. “Do you know who that baby is?”

  She nodded, her lips taking a hundred years to utter a single word. “Alex.”

  All the air got sucked out of the room at once, leaving me gasping. “It’s Alex? Felicia’s boy? But...but how do you know?”

  She looked at me, her eyes wide, terrified. “Because...because I killed him.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  “No,” I said, taking three steps back, trying to escape the confession that seemed to grow inside the cabin, taking over the room, pushing down on me, making me suffocate. “No.”

  “I didn’t mean to,” Emily sobbed, looking at me as if this was a story she’d needed to share for years, something bottled up inside her for so long, she had no choice but to set it free. And still, I didn’t want to know, didn’t want to hear.

  “I don’t believe you,” I said. “You wouldn’t have—”

  “It was an accident. I promise you, it was,” she cried, unable to stop. “He was on the play mat in the living room, fast asleep, and Hunter vomited. It went in my hair, down my clothes...” She closed her eyes for a second, whispered, “I went upstairs to change him.”

  I sank down on the armchair, my legs folding beneath me as if they’d been broken.

  “Hunter wasn’t sleeping well,” she continued, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Which meant I hadn’t been sleeping well, either. And after I cleaned us up and put him in his crib, I felt dizzy and needed to lie down. I told myself it would just be for five minutes, but I fell asleep—”

  “What happened to Alex?” I said. “Did he cry? Did you shake—”

  “No. It wasn’t... I’d never hurt him. Never.”

  “Then—”

  “Tyler came home and found him with...with...” She stared at me, her eyes begging for understanding, for mercy. “Alex wasn’t breathing. He had a cushion on his face, one of the heavy ones from the sofa. I knocked it off as I jumped up when Hunter was sick.” She let out another loud moan, balled her fists as she spoke. “I should’ve checked Alex was okay before I went upstairs. I should’ve looked back. Why didn’t I look back?”

  “But...but you said he was kidnapped. You said someone came into the house...”

  She shook her head. “It was a lie.”

  “You made it up?�
�� I whispered.

  “We panicked. I might have gone to jail. And even if everyone understood it was an accident, Tyler’s career would never have been the same, and his...our reputation... He’d always planned on going into politics. Senator, maybe, or even governor.” She looked away. “The lies were easier than they should have been. We were renovating, people coming and going all the time. Our house backs onto the woods, the torrential rain—”

  “Tyler took Alex—” I pressed my fingers over my eyelids until I saw stars, but the images of the tiny baby in the cold metal box came all the same “—and he buried him by the pond. But how could you do that? How could you lie? What about Felicia?”

  Emily covered her mouth with a hand, but the sobs escaped from between her fingers as the remaining color drained from her face, leaving her skin ashen. “I couldn’t bear it, Josh, you have to believe me. That night I wanted to go to the police, turn myself in, but Tyler begged me not to. He’d lied for me, covered for me, buried Alex for me...”

  I looked at her, all the feelings I’d thought I’d had for her now dissolving like they’d been thrown in a tub of acid. “What about Hunter?” I said quietly. “Did you hurt him, too?”

  Emily cried harder. “Please, Josh, you have to understand, all I could think of was Alex and what I’d done. What a terrible, despicable person I was. I didn’t deserve to have a child—”

  “What did you do, Emily? Where’s your son?”

  “I don’t know,” she shouted, “because I gave him away. I gave my baby away.”

  “What do you mean you—”

  “It rained that day,” Emily said, talking over me. “It came down so hard, worse than now. The roads were deserted, I could barely see. I stopped on a bridge, took Hunter out of his car seat, sat there as I cuddled him and cried.” She gulped, her breath rapid and shallow. “I don’t remember getting out, or walking to the edge of the bridge. But I stood there, holding my baby, staring down at the river, thinking how easy it would be for us to disappear.”

  “You were going to jump?” I said. “With Hunter?”

  “Yes.” Emily gasped for air, almost as if hearing someone say it out loud had suddenly made it real, that up to this point, she’d managed to tell herself it had all been in her mind. “I wanted to keep him safe, exactly how my father had done with my mother and Morgan. But then I saw the headlights, and a woman got out of her car—”

  “Who?” I whispered. “Who was she?”

  Emily shook her head. “She said she’d got lost in the rain, but I don’t think that’s what happened, not really. It was a sign. She was Hunter’s guardian angel, and—”

  “What was her name?” I said. “Emily, please, tell me her name.”

  “I don’t know,” she said as I fumbled for my wallet. “I don’t know. But I’ll never forget her red hair, and she had the greenest eyes I’ve ever—”

  “Was it her?” I said, pulling out the picture of Grace and pushing it into Emily’s hands. “Is this the woman you gave him to?”

  Emily gasped. “But...but...who... Why do you have—”

  “It’s Grace,” I said. “This is my Grace.”

  “Your Grace? But...but that means—”

  “Are you sure she’s the one you gave Hunter to? Absolutely sure?” I said, and Emily nodded. “But how could she do that? How could she just take a kid?”

  “Because I made her,” Emily whispered. “I told her if she wanted him and me to live, she had to. I said if she went to the police, if she dropped him off somewhere, I’d convince everyone she kidnapped him, I’d make sure she went to prison for the rest of her life.”

  I closed my eyes, saw Grace pleading with a hysterical, suicidal woman, begging her to let her help, before giving up. Had she seen it as her only chance to have a family, a baby of her own? “She drove off with him? Left you alone on the bridge?”

  Emily shook her head. “Not at first. She tried to convince me to go with her, said we could get help, and she wouldn’t leave me. She told me she’d been through terrible things, but she was in a good place now, and I could get there, too. I almost believed her.”

  I looked at her, didn’t dare say anything until she was done.

  “I knew she was hoping somebody would come by to rescue all of us,” she said, “but nobody did. She wouldn’t leave, she still wouldn’t take Hunter, so I held him over the edge of the bridge, screamed at her if she didn’t do as I said I’d let him go.” She swallowed, her voice hoarse. “She had no choice. I gave her no choice. She promised me she’d look after him. I made her promise.”

  The image of Grace, holding a boy in the rain, driving away with Hunter—Logan—rolled around my brain, and with it came an incredible surge of relief. She hadn’t stolen him. She’d taken him because she feared for his life, for Emily’s life. She must have been petrified, agonized over going to the police, or leave the baby somewhere, in both cases risk being arrested for something she hadn’t done. Would anybody have believed the truth if she’d told them? And how could she have been sure Emily wouldn’t make good on her promise to harm herself, and the baby, if he was ever returned? In her situation, what would I have done? What would anyone have done?

  “And the story about the men forcing you off the road...?” I said, and Emily looked away.

  “I threw my keys and phone in the river so I couldn’t go after her,” she said. “Don’t you see? I had to keep Hunter away from us. Away from me. It was the only way I could make things right. The only way I could live with what we’d done.”

  I imagined Grace watching the news, wondering if the police were closing in on her. Had she understood she’d done the right thing when she’d heard Emily’s fake account of what had happened on the bridge? A secret message from one woman to the other, an instruction to keep her baby safe?

  “I never stopped thinking about him,” Emily said. “Every second of every day I’ve wondered where he was, if he was alright. I wanted him back from the moment she drove away with him in her car and I realized I would never see him again. And all this time—” she smiled faintly “—all this time he was with you.”

  “Who else knew?” I said. “Who else did you tell?”

  “Nobody,” Emily whispered. “Only Tyler. He looked for him. He’s been searching for Hunter—for Grace—but he couldn’t find them. And now you found us.”

  “We have to go to the police,” I said. “We have to tell them—”

  “Tell them what? What’s going on?” a voice said behind us, and we spun around.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  “Tyler!” Emily rushed toward him. “Oh, my God, Tyler. We’ve found Hunter. We’ve found him. He was with Josh. Can you believe it? The woman I gave him to, she was his partner. She was Josh’s partner, Grace.”

  “Are you sure?” Tyler said before staring at me. “Is this true? You have my boy?”

  Something in his voice wasn’t right. As I looked at him, puzzle pieces started clicking and fitting, slotting together one by one, a picture, clear as Alpine water, emerging. The cryptic note I’d found with the old baby photos, made on a defunct printer Tyler could have had access to in the old building they owned. The snooping around the cabin and my truck, someone trying to find out why I was there. The beer on the deck, a gift, not from a welcoming neighbor, but a person who had the means to find my DUI record, who’d maybe hoped I’d drive drunk again, be arrested and made to disappear. Ivan would have argued circumstantial evidence at best, except for the final piece, the killer blow. Tyler was the only other living soul Emily had told about giving Hunter away to a red-haired woman on a bridge in the rain.

  “You already knew,” I said, taking a step toward him.

  “What do you mean?” Emily looked at us both, her head shaking. “That’s impossible.”

  “How did you find him?” I said. “How long before you figured out where he was?”r />
  Tyler looked at Emily, grabbed her hands. “I’m glad I followed you here. He’s insane—”

  “Did you frighten her?” I said, my fists clenched. “Threaten her? Did you follow her, too? Is that why you’d go to Albany? To see Grace?”

  “What are you talking about?” Tyler said, his shoulders back, chin raised. “Until thirty seconds ago I’d never heard of Grace Wilson.”

  Emily slowly turned toward Tyler. “How did you know her name?” she whispered.

  “What do you mean?” Tyler said. “You both said it.”

  “Her last name,” Emily said, and Tyler swallowed, his silence both revelatory and deafening. “You said you couldn’t find her. You promised me—”

  “Baby, I—”

  “—but...but you knew?” she cried. “You knew where Hunter was?”

  “You recognized me the first night, at Casa Mama, didn’t you?” I said. “But you couldn’t say anything because you didn’t know if it was a coincidence.”

  Emily’s sobs grew louder as she begged him, “Tyler, why didn’t you tell me—”

  “Because if I brought Hunter back,” Tyler said quietly, “even if the police believed Grace had taken him, I knew the guilt would push you over the edge. You’d confess and—”

  “You should have told me,” Emily wept. “Tyler, I want my baby back, I need—”

  “You will have him back,” he said. “We’re going to sit down with Josh and talk. Figure out—”

  “He knows about Alex,” she said, her voice empty, hollow. “He saw you at Monty’s Pond. I told him everything. He knows. It’s all over. We’re going to prison.”

  Tyler frowned at me with almost an apologetic look as he removed his gun from its holster and pointed it at me. “No, we’re not.”

  Emily jumped back as if electrocuted. “Tyler, what are you doing?”