There’s a beat of silence. “Excuse me?”
“You knew,” I say, my voice rising. “And you didn’t think to tell me she was in a hospital giving birth to my daughter?”
His tone hardens. “You’ve got some nerve to come at me like that after you were the one that left her.”
“She was pregnant with my daughter!” I shout. “She gave birth, and she buried her, and I had no idea!”
Another pause. He exhales slowly. “She made me promise.”
My vision goes red. “Promise what?”
“That I wouldn’t tell you,” he says. “That I wouldn’t tell anyone.”
I laugh, but it sounds unhinged. “That wasn’t your promise to keep.”
“Of course it was, she’smysister. She didn’t want you there out of obligation,” he fires back. “She didn’t want you showing up because you felt guilty. She thought if you wanted to be there, you would have been.”
The words hit exactly where hers did.
“You think I wouldn’t have dropped everything?” I demand.
“You didn’t,” he shoots back. “You left the next day.”
“I left because I thought she was fine!”
“And she thought if she mattered more, you would’ve stayed.”
The silence that follows is deadly.
“You don’t know what she was like after all of it,” Zale continues, voice pained. “She didn’t want to wake up. She barely ate. My mom slept in her room every single night because we were scared to leave her alone. She broke, Gabriel. She was completely and utterly broken.”
My chest caves in. “And you still didn’t tell me.”
“She made me swear,” he repeats through clenched teeth.
I can’t listen to another second, so I hang up. The world feels like it’s spinning too fast, and I can’t breathe, or think. All I can see is what I missed.
Our daughter.
Her tiny fingers.
Zalea alone in a hospital bed.
I scroll my phone again and call Reid.
He answers with his usual calm. “Everything okay?”
“No,” I say flatly. “I need out.”
A beat. “Out of what?”
“Italy. Today. As soon as possible.”
“What happened?”
“I just need to leave,” I shout, despite my effort to stay calm. “If I stay here right now, I’m going to lose my mind.”
Silence on his end, then the soft clicking of keys. “The best I can get you in the next few hours is Zurich. And it would be on a commercial flight. It’s messy, but it’s a seat.”
