The air turned freezing, colder than the rain pounding against the glass. I pressed my ear against the old wood, holding my breath, praying the baby wouldn\u2019t let out a single sigh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter what she suspects,\u201d the unknown voice hissed. \u201cThe buyer arrives tomorrow from the border. The advance has already been paid. A newborn with no official birth certificate, from a mother who \u2018died in childbirth\u2019\u2026 is clean merchandise, Arthur.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I felt an emptiness in my stomach that made me more nauseous than the pain from my stitches. He wasn\u2019t a creepy old man. He wasn\u2019t a stalker. He was something much worse: a wolf in a grandfather\u2019s clothing, auctioning off my son\u2019s life while feeding me warm soup.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe girl is weak,\u201d my father-in-law replied, and his voice no longer sounded awkward, but calculating. \u201cIf we give her the chamomile tea with the drops you gave me, she\u2019ll sleep until noon. By the time she wakes up, you\u2019ll be far away and I\u2019ll tell her the baby stopped breathing in his crib. She\u2019ll believe it. She\u2019s alone and scared.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I heard the clinking of cups downstairs. They were preparing my \u201cdinner.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I crawled back to the bed, tears burning my face. I looked at my baby, sleeping oblivious to the market of souls being woven beneath his feet. I didn\u2019t have a phone; my father-in-law had told me the signal was bad in the hills and had taken it downstairs \u201cto charge it\u201d in the kitchen. My husband was a thousand miles away. If I waited until tomorrow, my son would disappear in a black SUV, and I would end up in a psych ward or a grave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cFirst you dry your tears, then you cry,\u201d I remembered my mother\u2019s words.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I put on my shoes with trembling hands. I wrapped the baby in three blankets and tied him to my chest with a baby sling, holding him so tight I could feel his little heart beating against mine. I couldn\u2019t go down the stairs; they were in the kitchen, right at the foot of the steps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I looked at the window. Outside, the hydrangea patio was plunged in darkness and mud. The balcony was low, but for a woman who had just given birth, jumping six feet down was a sentence of pain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s now or never,\u201d I whispered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I heard the footsteps. Slow. Heavy. Coming up the stairs. Thud\u2026 thud\u2026 thud\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n I opened the window with a slow movement so it wouldn\u2019t creak. The cold air hit my face. I climbed onto the railing, feeling my stitches stretch as if they were going to tear. The pain was a white flash of lightning in my stomach, but the fear of losing my son was stronger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Just as the doorknob began to turn, I let go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I landed on the wet bushes. The impact knocked the wind out of me, and a silent scream choked in my throat. The baby let out a whimper, but didn\u2019t cry. I got up as best as I could, dragging one leg, and ran into the darkness of the fields, away from the yellow lights of the house that now felt like a prison.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I ran through the mud, tripping over rocks, feeling like my life was draining away with every step. I reached the main highway after what felt like hours. A pickup truck pulled over. It was a local farmer heading to the produce market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cPlease, help me!\u201d I screamed, showing him the baby. \u201cThey\u2019re trying to steal my son!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The man didn\u2019t ask any questions. He helped me in, and we sped off just as I saw the headlights of another car tearing out of my father-in-law\u2019s driveway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Three hours later, I was at a police precinct in downtown Chicago<\/strong>. My husband arrived the next day, pale and devastated. The police searched Arthur\u2019s house and found not only the sedatives but also documents of three other babies who had \u201cdied\u201d in the area over the last two years. My father-in-law wasn\u2019t a lonely old man; he was the center of a trafficking ring that used his facade as a sweet grandfather to prey on vulnerable women.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Today, my son is four years old. Sometimes I watch him run, and I still feel that chill down my spine remembering the footsteps on the stairs. Arthur is behind bars, but the lesson stayed etched into my soul: never ignore that inner voice telling you something is wrong, because sometimes, danger doesn\u2019t have claws or fangs\u2026 it has the voice of someone telling you to \u201ceat while it\u2019s hot.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The air turned freezing, colder than the rain pounding against the glass. I pressed my ear against the old wood, holding my breath, praying the baby wouldn\u2019t… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/myanh.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/myanh.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/myanh.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myanh.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myanh.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3503"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/myanh.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3503\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3506,"href":"https:\/\/myanh.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3503\/revisions\/3506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/myanh.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myanh.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myanh.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}