I was grieving the loss of my baby after giving birth when my 8-year-old son leaned close and whispered, “Mom, she’s not gone. I saw what Daddy did.”
My eight-year-old son, Toby, had spent months eagerly waiting for his baby sister.
Every night, he talked to my belly, helped us paint the nursery a soft pale yellow, and spent three entire weeks picking out a stuffed blue puppy because, in his words, “every little sister needs somebody to sleep with.”
Then everything went horribly wrong during the delivery.
I began bleeding heavily. The doctors rushed me into emergency surgery, and the last thing I remembered was my husband, Lucas, squeezing my hand while the nurses escorted Toby and my mother-in-law Brenda out of the room.
When I finally woke up several hours later, Lucas was sitting beside my hospital bed with red, swollen eyes.
They told me our daughter hadn’t survived.
I screamed until I had nothing left inside me. Lucas held me close and kept saying, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
I was weak and heavily medicated, so Lucas took care of everything that followed. I couldn’t even make myself ask many questions. All I wanted was to go home and somehow find a way to survive seeing the empty crib we had built together.
For the next two weeks, I barely stepped outside my bedroom.
Toby became unusually withdrawn too, but I assumed he was dealing with his grief in his own way. Then I noticed a glass jar sitting on his dresser that was slowly filling with money.
Coins. Crumpled dollar bills. Even the fifty dollars Grandma Brenda had given him for his birthday.
One afternoon, I caught him slipping his lunch money into it.
“What are you saving for, sweetheart?”
He hesitated before answering.
“My sister.”
My chest tightened.
I pulled him into my arms. “Toby, I know you miss her, but we can’t bring her back. She’s with God now.”
He pulled away from me and stared straight into my eyes.
“No, Mom.”
Something about his voice made me uneasy.
“If I save enough, we can get her back.”
I swallowed hard. “Honey, that’s not how people work.”
His forehead wrinkled in confusion.
“Then why did Daddy use money?”
I froze.
“What?”
Toby looked toward the hallway, almost as though he was worried Lucas might overhear us.
“The night you were sleeping at the hospital, Grandma Brenda went downstairs to get coffee. I went looking for Dad.”
His voice dropped to a whisper.
“I saw him talking to a lady near the elevators.”
My heart started pounding.
“He gave her a thick envelope.”
“Toby…”
Then he said something that made every hair on my arms stand up.
“After Daddy gave her the money, she took the bundle away.”
I stared at him.
“What bundle?”
Tears filled Toby’s eyes.
“The crying one.”
“Toby… did you know the woman?”
He nodded.
My heart slammed against my ribs.
“Who was she?”
His lower lip began to tremble.
“You know her too, Mommy.”
I stopped breathing.
Then he whispered one more thing:
“She came to see you in the hospital.”
My fingers went numb.
“Toby, who was she?”
He opened his mouth.
“Mommy… it was…”
But his face suddenly crumpled, and he burst into tears before he could finish.
