Chapter 2 - The Baby I Never Knew
For several seconds, I couldn't hear anything except the blood pounding inside my skull.
Pregnant.
Gwen had been pregnant.
We had made a child together before my last deployment rotation, and while I was sleeping in barracks thousands of miles away imagining the life I was trying to build for us, that child had existed.
Then died.
And nobody told me.
I stood so quickly that the chair scraped across the floor.
Gwen flinched.
That stopped me.
Not because I wasn't angry.
Because I realized she thought I was angry at her.
I knelt in front of her.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
Her lips trembled.
"I tried."
Those two words were worse than anything else.
"What do you mean you tried?"
She looked toward Dr. Warren.
He quietly closed the file.
"I'll give you two a moment."
When the door shut, Gwen reached into her purse.
The purse was old and cracked at the edges.
She pulled out a small plastic bag.
Inside was a phone.
Not the cheap phone I had seen her using the day before.
An older one.
The screen was shattered.
"It doesn't turn on anymore," she said.
"What is it?"
"My old phone."
She held it in both hands.
"I called you when I found out I was pregnant."
"I never got a call."
"I know."
"I would've answered."
"I know."
"I would've called back."
"I know."
Her tears came faster.
I hated hearing her say she knew.
Because of course she knew.
Gwen knew me better than anyone.
She knew I would have moved mountains to get home if I understood what was happening.
"So what happened?"
"Your mother said the military had told her families shouldn't contact deployed soldiers unless it was an emergency."
I stared at her.
"That isn't true."
"I didn't know."
"Pregnancy would've been enough reason to contact me anyway."
"I know that now."
She looked ashamed.
It made me sick.
None of this shame belonged to her.
"Keep going."
"I tried sending emails. Paige told me your address had changed. She gave me another one."
My stomach dropped.
"Another email?"
Gwen nodded.
"I wrote to it for months."
"Did anyone answer?"
"Sometimes."
The room seemed to shrink.
"What did the messages say?"
Her expression changed.
"They sounded like you."
I sat down slowly.
"What?"
"Short messages. You said you were busy. You told me not to worry about money. You said your mother would take care of me."
I stopped breathing.
Someone had been answering Gwen's emails pretending to be me.
"Do you still have them?"
"No. Margaret smashed the phone."
"Why?"
"After I miscarried."
The word still felt like a knife.
I forced myself to keep listening.
Gwen clasped her hands together.
"The night it happened, I woke up with cramps. Then I saw blood."
My eyes closed.
She continued.
"I went upstairs and told Margaret I needed the hospital. She said I was being dramatic."
"Paige?"
"She was there."
"What did she do?"
"Nothing."
Gwen swallowed.
"I begged them. Margaret said the baby was probably already gone and she wasn't wasting your money on another one of my performances."
My nails dug into my palms.
"I tried calling an ambulance."
Her eyes shifted toward the broken phone.
"She took it away."
I couldn't speak.
"I walked."
"What?"
"The hospital is almost three miles away."
"You walked?"
"I didn't make it."
My throat tightened.
"A woman found me sitting on the curb outside a grocery store."
She wiped her cheeks.
"She called 911."
I turned away.
There are kinds of anger that make you want to scream.
This was different.
This anger became cold.
Precise.
Almost calm.
I wanted names.
Dates.
Records.
Proof.
Not because I doubted Gwen.
Because I wanted Margaret and Paige to learn something I had learned overseas.
The truth becomes far more dangerous when it is documented.
I asked Gwen if the woman who called the ambulance had given her name.
"I think it was Elena."
That wasn't much.
But hospital records would have the ambulance report.
We returned to Dr. Warren.
He scheduled imaging and additional tests for that afternoon.
While Gwen changed into a hospital gown, I walked outside and called the military legal assistance office.
I explained enough to make the attorney stop me halfway through.
"Sergeant Hale, do not sign anything your family gives you."
"I wasn't planning to."
"Do you have access to the bank account where your pay was deposited?"
"Yes."
"Check every transaction. Download statements. Change passwords. Freeze credit if necessary."
"Why freeze credit?"
"Because if someone has been managing your finances without authorization for years, you don't yet know how far it goes."
That sentence turned out to be prophetic.
I sat in the hospital cafeteria with my laptop.
It took nearly an hour to access four years of statements.
Then I started reading.
Month one.
Transfers.
Month two.
Cash withdrawals.
Month three.
Furniture store.
Month four.
Vehicle payment.
Month five.
A check written for $7,500.
I had never written it.
The signature looked like mine.
Close.
But wrong.
I kept scrolling.
There were checks for contractors.
Appliances.
Jewelry.
A down payment on the truck.
Then I saw something that made me sit upright.
HOME EQUITY TRANSFER.
That made no sense.
I didn't own the new house.
I searched deeper.
Then I found a loan opened eighteen months earlier.
Borrower: ME.
Property address: the old family house.
I called the bank.
After verifying my identity, the representative became cautious.
"Mr. Hale, this loan was executed in person."
"No, it wasn't."
Silence.
"I was deployed."
"Could you hold, please?"
Five minutes later, a fraud specialist came on the line.
He asked whether I had ever granted Margaret Hale power of attorney.
"No."
"Did you authorize anyone to sign financial documents on your behalf?"
"No."
"Do you have the original documents?"
"No."
"We'll need to open an investigation."
"Do it."
Then he said something worse.
"There's another account."
I frowned.
"What account?"
"A joint account opened approximately three years ago."
"Joint with who?"
"Margaret Hale."
My mother.
"I never opened that."
The fraud specialist went silent again.
I looked through the hospital window at Gwen being wheeled toward imaging.
"How much money moved through it?"
He hesitated.
"A little over eighty-three thousand dollars."
I closed my eyes.
There it was.
Almost all of it.
My deployment money.
Routed through an account I never knew existed.
"Can you send me the records?"
"We'll preserve them as part of the investigation."
"I need them."
"I understand."
My phone buzzed.
A message from Paige.
MOM SAYS THE LAWYER CAN COME TONIGHT. WE SHOULD SIGN EVERYTHING BEFORE THE BANKS CLOSE TOMORROW.
I stared at it.
Then I typed:
Sounds good. Tell Mom I want everything ready.
I hit send.
If they wanted to move quickly, I would let them.
Back upstairs, Dr. Warren was waiting.
Gwen sat beside him.
I knew something was wrong before he spoke.
"The scans show lymph node involvement."
My mouth went dry.
"What does that mean?"
"It means this is more serious than it appeared five months ago."
Gwen's hand found mine.
"What stage?"
"We need pathology confirmation, but I'm concerned we're dealing with stage three disease."
Gwen looked at me.
I forced myself not to react.
Not yet.
"Is it treatable?"
"Yes."
One word.
The first good word I had heard all day.
"It will require aggressive treatment."
"Then do it."
Dr. Warren looked at Gwen.
"Treatment isn't something we simply begin without discussing the risks."
"Discuss them."
So he did.
Chemotherapy.
Possible surgery.
Radiation.
Side effects.
Fertility implications.
Recovery.
Bills.
Time.
Every sentence felt heavy.
When he finished, Gwen whispered, "How much?"
I looked at her.
She was worried about money.
After everything.
She was still worried about money.
I took her face gently in my hands.
"You will never sell another piece of yourself to pay for treatment."
She began crying.
"I mean it."
She pressed her forehead against mine.
Then she whispered something so quietly I almost missed it.
"There's something else you need to know about the money."
I pulled back.
"What?"
"Your mother didn't just take yours."
"What do you mean?"
Gwen glanced toward the door.
"Your father left me something."
My father had died six years earlier.
He adored Gwen.
He used to call her the daughter he wished Margaret and he had raised instead of the daughter-in-law I brought home.
"What did he leave you?"
"I don't know exactly."
"How could you not know?"
"Because Margaret never gave me the letter."
My stomach tightened.
"What letter?"
Gwen looked frightened.
"Three months before he died, your father told me that if anything ever happened to you while you were serving, I would still have a home."
I stared at her.
May you like
"He said he had changed his will."
That was the moment I realized the money I had sent home might not be the biggest thing my mother had stolen.
