Ficorpio
Chapter 1
Chapter 1
My daughter was only a month old when she died.
Someone wrapped her in her little blanket and threw her from the twentieth-floor balcony. She hit the ground alive.
That same night, I slept so deeply I couldn’t wake up—because of a glass of milk.
The milk my husband handed me himself.
That night, I was in the bedroom changing Sunny’s diaper when the door suddenly swung open.
My mother-in-law walked in with a woman behind her.
“Claire is pregnant. It’s a boy.” She pointed to the slight curve of the woman’s stomach, then added in the same casual tone she might have used to assign grocery shopping, “From now on, you’ll be responsible for her meals and daily care until she delivers safely.”
I stared at her, sure I’d misheard.
“What? Why would I do that? What does her pregnancy have to do with me?”
Margaret shot me a look. “Why? Because the baby she’s carrying is Evan’s. If you don’t take care of her, who will?”
I froze.
For a second, I honestly thought I’d heard wrong.
Then I asked, “What… what did you just say? Whose baby?”
“Evan Sterling. Your husband.” Her voice turned sharper, impatient. “You’ve been married into this family for years and still couldn’t give the Sterlings what they need to carry on the family line. So I found someone who could. From now on, you’ll take good care of Claire—”
She kept talking, but I couldn’t hear another word.
My hand moved on instinct. I grabbed my phone and tried to call Evan.
I didn’t believe it.
We had been married for seven years. We’d always gotten along. And after everything we’d been through, after finally having our daughter, I refused to believe he had betrayed me like this.
The call had barely started ringing before Margaret snatched the phone out of my hand.
“Who are you calling?” she snapped. “Going to run and complain again? That’s all you ever do. You sit around all day and whine while my son works himself to de
It didn’t take long for Evan to come back.
He spent a while in the living room calming Margaret down. I didn’t know what he said to her, but eventually the crying stopped.
Then he knocked on the bedroom door.
“Nina, open up. Let’s talk this through—”
Before he could finish, I yanked the door open. “Is the baby that woman’s carrying yours?”
The second the door opened, Evan slipped inside.
“Nina, listen to me. It’s not what you think.”
He told me the woman’s name was Claire Dawson. She was the distant relative of one of his coworkers. Her husband had died not long after she got pregnant.
Chapter 2
Chapter 2
That day, Claire had come to the office to borrow money from that coworker, and Evan happened to run into her. He’d felt sorry for her and offered to lend her some money himself.
Margaret had seen that scene by chance and jumped to the wrong conclusion.
Evan said he’d meant to explain.
But ever since Sunny was born, Margaret had been hounding him nonstop, demanding that he find another woman a
I don’t know how I made it downstairs.
The elevator had to come down twenty floors, but it felt like a century. By the time I finally reached the lobby, I felt like I’d just survived a serious illness. There wasn’t a shred of strength left in me.
A crowd had gathered by the landscaped area outside the building. Police tape had already gone up. People stood there pointing toward something on the ground, pity written all over their faces.
“It’s a girl.”
“She was only a month old.”
“The fall was awful. From twenty floors up…”
“God. That’s just horrible.”
Someone helped me forward.
Then I saw the little yellow padded jacket my daughter always wore, wrapped in a white baby blanket that was now soaked through with blood.
Her tiny body lay facedown on the ground.
Her face was already mangled beyond recognition.
And I still knew her.
It was Sunny.
My daughter.
My Sunny.
Something exploded inside my head. The world went silent. I could only keep shaking my head, praying over and over that this was a nightmare.
That I would wake up and find my baby safe beside me.
That her soft pink mouth would be rooting around in her sleep, searching for milk. That when she got hungry, she would nuzzle against me. That after she’d eaten her fill, the corners of her mouth would curl into that sweet little smile.
I had imagined her growing up so many times.
She would be bright and beautiful.
I was going to give her everything I could. I was going to watch her grow up healthy and happy—
I closed my eyes.
Then opened them again.
Nothing had changed.
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
Someone helped me up from the ground.
I turned my head. It was the same policewoman from before.
I parted my lips, wanting to ask her if I was dreaming.
But no sound came out.
A warm hand closed around mine.
Then I saw Evan’s face. His mouth was moving, saying something to me, but I couldn’t hear him. Not anymore.
The crowd slowly began to disperse.
The world lost its color.
Darkness rushed over me, and I blacked out.
Sunny was gone.
My daughter was gone.
She was the child I’d fought for through countless pills, countless injections, and round after round of IVF.
To have her, I started medication in the second year of my marriage. Every day, I gave myself shots. I went through one IVF cycle after another, and one failure after another.
I still remembered the first transfer.
I lay in bed every day, hardly daring to move.
Chapter 3
Chapter 3
Evan was always busy with work. My mother was busy helping my brother and sister-in-law with their child. No one had time to look after me, so I lived on takeout every single day.
I finally made it through those first two months.
Then the morning sickness started.
Everything I ate came right back up. I got so thin I was skin and bones, and I had to keep going to the hospital for IV fluids.
After I finally survived that, the third trimester came, and with it the swelling, the anemia, the dizziness, the pelvic pain so bad it felt like my body was splitting apart. The pain kept me awake whole nights at a time.
At my lowest, I asked myself over and over: Was any of this worth it?
Yes.
The moment Sunny was born, the doctor carried her tiny body over to me and told me I had a daughter.
My heart melted completely.
Tears of happiness slid from the corners of my eyes.
I made a vow to myself then. For the rest of my life, I would do everything I could to give my daughter the very best. I would thank her for choosing me to be her mother.
She was all my hope.
And now, Sunny was gone.
My hope was gone too.
When I woke again, I was in a hospital.
People kept moving through my room. Doctors. Police officers. A counselor. They came and went in a blur, asking the same questions over and over—where had I been, what had I done, what had happened that morning?
I was asleep.
From a little after seven the night before until everything happened this morning, I had been asleep the whole time.
Evan had told me to get some rest. He said he would take care of Sunny.
Then it hit me.
“I want to see Evan Sterling,” I said to the police.
The officer looked at me for a moment, then unlocked his phone and held up a video.
Margaret Sterling was on the screen.
Someone was supporting her by the arm. She was crying so hard she looked seconds from collapsing, but every word out of her mouth was painfully clear.
“Nina has serious psychological problems,” she said. “Ever since Sunny was born, she would just sit there staring out the window and ignore the baby. She thought Sunny’s birth had stolen her freedom, so she never liked her. The doctor said it was postpartum depression. I did everything I could—I was careful with her, I took care of the baby, I looked after Nina during her postpartum confinement. I just never imagined… never imagined something like this would still happen. The baby was so young. How could she possibly have climbed onto the balcony by herself? I don’t believe it.”
The moment she finished, her eyes rolled back and she fainted from “grief.”
Evan rushed forward to catch her and helped her onto the ambulance.
I felt like I’d been struck by lightning.
She said she had been helping me take care of Sunny?
She said she had been looking after me?