Marcus Richardson stood there, hat dripping, coat wet with rain he must’ve ridden through hard. His eyes were wide, wild with shock. For one second he didn’t move, as if his brain refused to name what he was seeing.
Then rage detonated.
“What the hell are you doing?” he snarled.
Janelle tightened instinctively around the baby. He startled but didn’t unlatch.
Marcus strode forward, fists clenched. “Get away from my son. Now.”
Her throat locked. Fear made her tongue useless.
Marcus’s gaze flicked to the baby’s face and froze.
Because the baby wasn’t gray anymore.
There was pink in his cheeks. Breath in his lungs. Life in his fingers.
“Marcus,” Janelle rasped, voice breaking free in a thin thread. “He was dying.”
“I told you not to touch him!” Marcus’s voice shook with fury and something deeper, uglier. “What kind of… sickness is this?”
The word sickness hit like her uncle’s voice.
Janelle’s eyes burned. She swallowed hard, then forced her spine straight.
“Some fat widow nobody wanted,” she said, and her voice turned cold with truth. “Some burden your money bought.”
Marcus flinched as if she’d struck him.
“I heard him,” she continued, stronger now, still rocking, still humming under her breath. “I came up here and he was gray. Cold. Lips blue. Barely breathing. And my body… my body remembered what yours couldn’t give him.”
Marcus’s jaw worked like he was chewing words too bitter to swallow. “How?”
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