Chapter 2 - The Name on the Plastic Band
Sarah caught the child and the bundle in a single, sweeping motion before they struck the pine planks. The baby let out a faint, reedy wail, the sound so thin it barely carried over the drumming storm outside. Sarah bundled them both into the warm center of the living room, setting the girl down on the hearth rug in front of the cast-iron stove before lifting the swaddled newborn into the crook of her arm.
The heat radiating from the woodstove hit the child’s soaked nightgown, releasing the smell of river mud, rain, and old cedar. Sarah peeled back the sodden edge of the outer blanket. The infant was tiny, barely days old, his dark eyelashes stuck together in sleep. Sarah’s fingers traced the plastic bracelet again, smoothing the crumpled band against the tiny wrist. The name was crisp beneath the moisture: Miller, Infant Boy. Beneath it, the mother’s registered name made Sarah's heart slam against her ribs: Clara Miller.
Clara had been dead for six years. Everyone in Blackwood Hollow had attended the service; they had watched the closed casket descend into the family plot behind the grain silo after Clara's car went over the creek bridge during the spring thaw. There had been no body recovered, only a rusted chassis crushed against the limestone bed and a town that closed the book on a runaway daughter.
Sarah turned slowly toward the girl huddled by the hearth. "Who gave you this baby, sweetheart? Who told you to come here?"
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The girl looked up, her lips pale blue, eyes glazed with a terrible clarity. "She said you were the only one who didn't lie to her before the water took the car."
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