Page 60 of This Wild Heart

He’d hardly looked at the baby.

Parker paced in the kitchen, trying to get the camera footage to pull up on his phone.

“Tell me again what she said to you,” he said, eyes locked on his screen.

I repeated it for the third time in the past ten minutes and was waiting for something, anything from the man in the kitchen. His face was still pale from shock, and he’d tugged on a Voyagers shirt while I brought the car seat inside and unhooked the baby. The warm, writhing little bundle in my arms was halfway asleep again, and I rocked back and forth, watching him battle the heavy weight of his eyelids with an ache in my chest the size of an elephant.

Parker cursed under his breath. “I don’t know how this stupid fucking app works. Why won’t it let me back up?”

I shifted the baby in my arms and looked over his shoulder. “Tap those little dots right there in the top corner.” I pointed at his screen. “Now select the time you want to see right there.”

He gave a quick, tight nod.

“Did you read the letter?” I asked quietly.

Parker bit down on his bottom lip while he scrolled through camera footage. “Just the first couple of lines.”

The baby’s eyes finally closed, and I eased him back into his car seat, rocking it a few times to ensure he stayed asleep. The letter was shoved back in the diaper bag, along with a can of formula, a dozen diapers, two pacifiers, and a couple of outfits.

The girl claimed, in the short, clearly hastily written letter, that she got pregnant after she slept with Parker about ten months earlier. The baby was born four weeks premature. She had no family, no support, and struggled with depression and anxiety even before she’d gotten pregnant. Postpartum hit her hard. She was scared. Scared she’d hurt herself. Accidentally hurt the baby. When she saw the news of our marriage, it felt like the sign she needed. The baby was ours now, she said. She didn’t want money. She didn’t want to see him. What she wanted was for him to have a better life than she could give him.

Please don’t try to find me,she said.Please. Just love him the way he deserves. I can’t do that for him.

There was more, but my heart hurt too much to keep reading.

“There,” Parker said, leaning in to squint at the screen.

He tilted it toward me, and when I saw her standing by the gate, I nodded. “That’s her. She knocked after she set the baby down. God, what if I hadn’t been down here? There’s no way it would’ve woken us up.”

Parker’s jaw tightened, and he cut me a quick, intense look, but it disappeared just as fast as it had appeared. Still, I felt it down to my toes.

“Do you remember her?” I asked carefully.

He swallowed. “No.”

I closed my eyes. “She … she said something at the end of the letter.”

His head snapped in my direction. “What?”

“She said you’d just gotten your tattoo,” I answered quietly. “The birds. She said it was still covered, and she had to leave for work before you woke up, but she saw it in the morning.”

“Fuck,” he breathed, tossing his phone onto the counter with an angry clatter. He set his hands down on the island and hung his head, ribs expanding as he took a few deep breaths.“Fuck. That was right before … I remember looking at pictures in that apartment before I left to see if I remembered who …” He straightened, face blank and eyes dead. “I can’t do this.”

At the empty tone, my head reared back. “What do you mean you can’t do this?”

Parker strode out of the kitchen and disappeared back toward his bedroom.

I covered my mouth and fought a wave of fear that trickled up my spine. It wasn’t even my past literally showing up at the doorstep, and I wasn’t sure I could do this either.

“Think,” I whispered. “Think, Anya.”

The baby was still sleeping.

Leo, I corrected. Leo was still sleeping. She’d never used his name in the letter, but the birth certificate was in the bag too. Parker was listed as the father, and I blew out a slow breath while my mind raced. The temptation to call my parents was strong, but they were hours away, and we had some more immediate needs.

I pulled out my phone and tapped on the newest contact I’d added. She picked up right away.

“Hey, sunshine. What can I do for you?”

---