Chapter 4

“Ms. Bennett, are you sure you want to sign the consent form refusing an epidural?”

“Yes. How much does it cost?”

“Between fifteen hundred and two thousand dollars.”

“I’m not getting one. Give me the form.”

The lights in the delivery room were painfully bright.

The contractions came one after another, like someone twisting a dull knife inside my body.

I bit down on a towel until my fingernails dug holes into the bedsheets.

Mia stood outside the delivery room and shouted through the door.

“You can do it!”

She had skipped her afternoon classes to come.

Fourteen hours.

By the time the baby was born, I no longer had the strength to cry.

The nurse placed the tiny, wrinkled, red baby on my chest. He opened his mouth and wailed so loudly that the entire floor could hear him.

“Boy. Six pounds, four ounces. Mother and baby are both safe.”

I lowered my head and looked at him.

His eyes were closed, and his tiny fists were clenched tight, as if he were already fighting the world.

“You’re just as stubborn as your father.”

The nurse filled out the birth certificate and asked me what to name him.

“Noah.”

“What should I put for the father?”

“Leave it blank.”

The nurse looked up at me but asked no questions. She drew a line through the father’s section.

On the day I was discharged, Mia borrowed her roommate’s car to pick us up.

I held Noah in the back seat. He was wrapped in a discounted blanket from the mall and slept peacefully.

My phone lit up.

A message from an unfamiliar number. There was no greeting, only a long paragraph.

“Ms. Bennett, I’m Ethan’s attending physician, Dr. Lucas Reed. I’ve debated for a long time whether to tell you this, but I’ve decided you deserve to know. Ethan’s amnesia is questionable. His brain CT showed only very minor frontal-lobe damage, not enough to cause selective amnesia. With an injury of this degree, most patients gradually recover their memories within three to six months. However, his family explicitly instructed me not to mention any information about you in front of him. I can’t determine whether he truly forgot you or whether he was guided into forgetting you. This is my personal number. I’ll delete this message after sending it. I just thought you should know.”

I read it three times.

Then I locked my phone.

Mia glanced at me through the rearview mirror.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

It wasn’t nothing.

I just didn’t know whether this was good news or bad.

If Ethan had truly lost his memory, then everything was fate.

Fate had made him forget me. Fate had allowed Sophie to take my place.

I could accept that.

But if his amnesia had been manipulated, reinforced, and carefully maintained—

Then Sophie hadn’t simply taken advantage of an opportunity.

She had planned everything.

Noah stirred in my arms and smacked his little lips twice.

I lowered my head and kissed his forehead.

When we returned to the rented room, the landlady was waiting in the hallway.

“Claire, someone came looking for you.”

“Who?”

“A man and a woman. The woman was dressed very nicely and said she used to work with you. The man stayed in the car.”

“What did they look like?”

“The woman had a round face and spoke very softly.”

Sophie.

“Did she leave a message?”

The old woman thought for a moment.

“She said you should send the baby’s birth certificate to her. The Carter family wanted to see if the baby really belonged to Ethan. If it was confirmed, they would give you some money.”

“Those were her exact words?”

“More or less. She also said, ‘If the baby really is Ethan’s, Margaret won’t mistreat him. At least he’ll be a child with a father.’”

Mia’s eyes turned red as she listened.

“What kind of person says something like that? What does ‘a child with a father’ even mean? His father doesn’t even acknowledge him, and they still have the nerve to—”

“Mia.” I interrupted her, my voice calm. “Help me change the locks.”

That night, Noah cried for most of the night.

He wasn’t hungry.

He hadn’t wet himself.

He had colic.

A mother still recovering from childbirth carried her three-day-old baby around an eight-square-meter room.

Outside the window, I could hear people playing cards in the neighboring apartment. A stray cat yowled somewhere downstairs.

When my legs became too weak to stand, I sat on the edge of the bed and held Noah upright, gently patting his back.

He finally stopped crying and gave a tiny burp against my shoulder.

My phone lit up again.

A message from Sophie.

This time, she didn’t use another number. She posted it directly on her social media account and didn’t block me.

The photo showed Ethan holding her hand as they looked at baby supplies in a department store.

The caption had only four words:

**Getting ready for our baby.**

Margaret had liked the post and commented:

“Sophie, thank you for all your hard work. I’ve been waiting for a grandchild for so long.”

I stared at the post for a long time.

Then I set my phone down and hugged the little body sleeping against my shoulder.

“Noah, Mommy promises you…” My voice was quiet, as if I was afraid of waking him. “One day, I’ll let you stand in the sunlight and tell everyone exactly who you are.”

“But not now.”