Chapter 16 - The Stitch She Didn't Want Me to Find
The nursery smelled faintly of chamomile lotion, warm milk, and the damp cedar from the rain tapping relentlessly against the double-paned glass. Nathan had just fallen asleep, his tiny chest rising and falling beneath his swaddle, his miniature fingers curled into tight, translucent fists.
I stood by the threshold, watching my wife. Khloe hadn’t turned on the overhead lamp. She was illuminated only by the faint amber glow of the sound machine on the dresser. Her posture was stiff, her shoulders pulled taut toward her ears in that familiar defensive crouch she assumed whenever the ghost of her family drifted into our home.
She was holding Isabella’s blanket.
For three weeks, the gray-and-blue knit had rested on the back of the nursing rocking chair like an uneasy truce. Neither of us had touched it. We walked past it as if it were unexploded ordnance—delicate, volatile, capable of detonating the fragile peace we had painstakingly assembled piece by piece over the last six months.
"You're staring at it again," I said softly, stepping into the room. The floorboards didn't creak; I had sanded them down myself during Khloe’s third trimester, desperate to silence every sound that might disturb our haven.
Khloe didn't turn around immediately. Her thumb traced the edge of the hem. "The tension is off," she whispered. Her voice carried a low, scratchy rasp. "Isabella learned how to crochet from our mother before she passed. Bella was always obsessive about the edges. Triple-loop slip stitch. Clean. Perfectly measured. She used to unravel an entire scarf if a single loop was loose."
She lifted the bottom corner, turning it toward the amber light.
"Look at this seam, Mark," she said.
I stepped closer, leaning over her shoulder. My hand rested on the warm curve of her neck, feeling the rapid, nervous flutter of her pulse. Where the baby-blue yarn met the charcoal border, the stitching was clumsy. It was thicker than the rest, overlapping in rough, hurried knots. It looked like an amateur repair—or a hurried concealment.
"Maybe she was in a hurry," I suggested gently, though my stomach tightened with sudden suspicion. "Or her hands were shaking. You know how much she lost after the settlement."
"Isabella’s hands never shake," Khloe replied flatly. "She lost her business, she lost her dignity, she almost went to federal court for fraud, but her vanity never slipped once. She wouldn't send a baby blanket with an uneven hem to her estranged nephew. Not unless there was a reason."
Before I could speak, Khloe pinched the thickest part of the border between her thumb and index finger. She pressed hard.
A sharp, brittle click echoed in the quiet room.
Khloe froze. Her gaze locked with mine in the dim amber light. That familiar terror—the cold shadow from the hospital room months ago—surged back into her eyes.
"Get the kitchen shears," she commanded in a breathless whisper.
"Khloe, wait. If this is another one of her psychological games—"
"Get the shears, Mark. Now."
I ran downstairs. The stairs felt steeper under my feet, the quiet of the midnight house suddenly suffocating. In the kitchen, the stainless steel blades of the kitchen shears gleamed under the under-cabinet lighting. I grabbed them and took the stairs two at a time, my heart hammering against my ribs.
When I re-entered the nursery, Khloe had laid the blanket flat across the changing table. Her hands, unlike Isabella’s mythical composure, were trembling violently.
"Cut the dark yarn right there," she said, pointing a shaking finger at the knot. "Don't cut the inner core. Just sever the wool."
I positioned the shears. The blades bit through the tight fibers with a soft, muffled crunch. The gray wool parted. Beneath it, wound tightly in layers of heavy industrial thread, was a thin strip of bubble wrap.
My throat went dry. I used the tips of the shears to tease the wrapping out of the hollow seam. It slid onto the vinyl pad of the changing table.
It wasn't a tracker. It wasn't an explosive.
It was a small, high-density flash drive, encased in clear resin, alongside a heavy brass key stamped with three engraved letters: **B.S.V.** and the number **402**.
Taped to the plastic drive was a handwritten note on thin onion-skin paper, folded into a square no larger than a postage stamp. Khloe picked it up with numb fingers and unfolded it.
The handwriting belonged to Isabella. Sharp, slanting, unmistakably arrogant, but here the ink was smudged, as if her hand had dragged across wet tears.
*“If you’re reading this, Catherine took the original files. She lied to you in the hospital room, Khloe. She lied to both of us. The embryos were never the real leverage. Dad didn't die of heart failure. Check Vault 402 before Catherine finds out I sent you the key. If she knows you have this, Nathan isn't safe.”*
May you like
The nursery fell into a suffocating, ringing silence. From the crib, our son stirred, letting out a small, contented sigh in his sleep, completely unaware that the nightmare had never truly ended.
***
