Please.
The curtain was half-open.
Brenda watched me kneeling outside.
Then Diane entered the frame.
My breath caught.
In the video, Diane looked toward the balcony and whispered, “Brenda, this has gone too far.”
Brenda replied, “Five more minutes.”
Diane wrung her hands.
“She’s pregnant.”
“And she milks it every second.”
Then came my voice again, weaker.
The baby. Please.
Diane stepped toward the door.
Brenda grabbed her wrist.
“Mom,” she said, cold and low, “you said yourself she needed to learn her place.”
Diane froze.
The video shook as Lily shifted behind the counter.
Then Diane looked at me through the glass.
She saw me.
She saw everything.
And she did not open the door.
Instead, she turned away.
That was when Brenda pulled the curtain shut.
The video ended with Lily whispering, “Aunt Brenda is being bad,” before running down the hall.
I could not breathe.
Jacob stopped the video, his face white.
“I didn’t know Mom saw you,” he said.
I believed him.
But belief did not soften the damage.
The next morning, the doctors confirmed the contractions had slowed. The baby remained stable, though I would need bed rest and close monitoring. Police came again. This time, they asked about Diane too.
By noon, Brenda had been arrested.
By evening, Diane had stopped calling Jacob and started calling Robert instead.
And by the following morning, the story had already spread through the family like fire.
But the most shocking thing came three days later.
Jacob returned to my hospital room holding a sealed evidence bag the police had shown him during questioning. Inside was a small amber bottle with the label half-scratched off.
“They found it in Brenda’s purse,” he said.
I stared at it.
Misoprostol.
My hands went cold.
“That’s not all,” Jacob said.
His voice had changed. It was low, stunned, almost afraid.
“There were text messages.”
I looked up.
“Between Brenda and who?”
Jacob swallowed.
“My mother.”
A chill moved through me.
He sat down slowly, as if his legs could no longer hold him.
“They weren’t just talking about me being too soft with you,” he said. “They were talking about the baby.”
The monitor beeped steadily beside me.
I placed both hands over my stomach.
“What did they say?”
Jacob’s eyes lifted to mine.
