That first night, Max wouldn’t come to dinner until I physically walked him downstairs.
He barely spoke.
When the baby cried, he flinched so hard he knocked his juice over. Daniel snapped at him for being careless, and Max burst into tears so fast it shocked us both.
Later, after I got the baby settled, I found him sitting in the upstairs hallway outside the nursery with his knees tucked to his chest.
“Sweetheart?” I said, kneeling down. “Talk to me.”
His cheeks were wet. “That baby isn’t my sister.”
I pushed his hair back from his forehead. “Why do you keep saying that?”
He shook his head violently. “I don’t want Daddy to hear.”
Something cold moved through me then. Small, but real.
“Okay,” I said softly. “Daddy can’t hear. Tell me.”
Max grabbed my hand with both of his.
His fingers were icy.
“Because I saw what they did at the hospital after Daddy took me to get juice.”
I stared at him.
“What do you mean?”
His little chest started heaving the way it did when he was trying not to cry too hard.
“Daddy said we were getting apple juice from the machine. But then he didn’t go to the machine. He took me down the other hallway, and he told me to stand by the wall and be quiet.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.” His voice cracked. “He looked mad.”
I felt suddenly, horribly awake.
“What happened next?”
Max swallowed. “A lady came.”
“What lady?”
He frowned, struggling. “She looked like you. But not you.”
I remember the exact way the hallway light buzzed above us. The exact smell of baby lotion on my shirt. The exact pressure building in my ears.
“What do you mean she looked like me?”
“Same hair,” he whispered. “Same face shape. But older. And she was crying.”
I told myself he was five. Five-year-olds mix things up. They notice weird details.
They make stories when they’re scared.
Still, my voice came out thin. “Then what?”
Max looked toward the nursery and lowered his voice even more.
“Daddy gave her a big envelope. Like the kind in movies. The fat kind.”
My skin prickled.
“And then?”
“He told me not to look.” Max started crying for real then, quiet and shaking. “But I did.”
I wrapped both arms around him. “It’s okay. You’re okay.”
“No.” He pulled back and looked at me with desperate, red-rimmed eyes. “Mommy, he took the baby from her.”
I froze.
“He took the baby, and she was crying, and he said, ‘This is the only way this works.’”
My mouth went dry. “Did you see the baby’s face?”
Max nodded once. “She had the pink hat. Not the flower hat.”
At the hospital, our daughter had been wearing two little hats the nurses had switched out because of spit-up. One plain pink.
One white with tiny flowers.
I hadn’t told Max that.
