“I saw her down in ER. She had your face—” he points— “and my eyes.” I watch as fury twists his features. “I was her doctor, Evie! She looked just like you,” he moans. “September 2007, born in Asheville…” He shakes his head, his chest pumping with his frantic breaths.

Adrenaline has lit me up, but I can’t tell him! If I do, this will be over, and it can’t be over. “Why did you think this girl you saw was—”

“No! Don’t do that shit with me, Evie! They told me she’s adopted.” Landon’s voice cracks. “They told me she was…yours.”

I shake my head as I move toward him. “We should step into a room—”

He holds his arms out as a barrier. “Why’d you name her Ashtyn, Evie? It reminds me of my mother.” His face crumples, his head bows, and his hand comes over his eyes as Landon’s shoulders start to shake.

“I’m so sorry.”

“I was gone. You said you tried to find me. You tried, but you couldn’t…so…”

“Come here.” I reach for him, and Landon stumbles back.

“Landon, please come with me. Let me talk!” I start to cry as he takes one step back, and then another, moving his hand off his tear-streaked face.

“She...uh…hurt her arm,” he says in a thick voice. “I think she’s okay now. Bay three.”

He reaches out to touch the wall, blinking as he steadies himself. Then he turns and jogs off down the hallway.

* * *

My mind is spinning, my pulse racing, my heart wrenched with pain so awful, it’s like the day I birthed her—Ashtyn Nora Deckert—someone else’s baby. But she wasn’t someone else’s when she got here. She was mine.

I came home at thirty-seven weeks so I could birth her in my state of residence. So I could finalize the deal to give her to the Deckerts. I remember it was strangely cold that week, the weather dark and misty. Sometimes fall in Asheville is vibrant and beautiful, but that one wasn’t.

I cried every night. I would lie awake, exhausted and uncomfortable, and I would beg the universe for Landon. If he came back to me, I was going to change my mind and keep the baby.

One night, I slept downstairs in his old bed, where our baby was created. That’s the night contractions started.

I went to the hospital—Carolina General—when my parents thought it seemed like time. Emmaline cried because she couldn’t come with us. My grandma kept her.

During labor, I was treated with the utmost care and kindness by my parents’ colleagues. My mother held my hand while I screamed and moaned, and I remember how she tried to tell me moms and daughters had been doing this together for thousands of years.

“No boys,” she told Dad when he called from in the hall.

Makayla was my only friend who knew the truth. She sat in the waiting room with Dad, Aunt Raina, and my other grandma.

In the moments that I pushed, I remember thinking I was no different than Landon’s mother, a horrible abandoner who broke his heart before his poor young mind could even form its first memories. I was giving up my own child at the very same place she had.

I pushed hard, and felt an awful fire of pain all through my legs and belly. I started to sob, and then I saw her tiny, crying face. She had my mouth and cheeks, and Landon’s brows. When someone laid her on my chest, I fell in love. Our baby. Perfect.

I cried the whole night while I held her. Her parents wanted her to get my colostrum, and my mom wanted closure for me, so the deal was, that first night, I’d be with her alone.

Mom asked me only once if I was sure. I’d just emerged from my first shower, and Mom was looking down at her from where they sat together in the rocking chair.

“Dad and I can’t help the way some other parents could, but Evie…this needs to be your choice.”

My mother looked at me, and I at her, and I knew she was telling me to do what my heart said I had to.

I took her from my mom, and I tried to envision her at day care while I finished school and went to college. I closed my eyes and prayed, and thought of Landon. If I kept her, she would likely never know her father. Landon had been off the grid for months. I had to face that. If I gave her to the Deckerts, she’d have both. She would also get two older brothers. I had seen their pictures of the bedroom they had for her. The diaper bag and car seat. Her parents had even let me help name her.

They arrived a few hours later, and when I saw Clara Deckert sob and collapse against her burly husband, when they cried with me and talked to me and listened, when they promised they would send me pictures, and invite me for birthday parties, when they told me she was what would fill the holes inside their hearts from Clara’s stillbirth the year before…what could I do?

They held her with such care, and in their eyes, I could see pride. Clara giggled like a teenager herself and rubbed the baby’s little toes, and I could see that she would be okay. She’d be better than okay. She would be wholly cared for, wholly loved.

Before they left, I fed her one last time, then Clara handed her to Mark. She walked with me into the bathroom. We held hands, and she said, “You’re my angel, Evie. You are Ashtyn’s angel, and because of you, she made it here, where all of us can love her.”

I let them take her. In that moment, it felt right. It almost always did—until I saw Landon again.

* * *

Mark and Clara tell me everything when I get to the ER. Ash has a mild brachial plexus injury from falling out of the tree house Mark built her and her brothers last year. Her arm is in a sling, but all is well; her CT and her MRI look good. When I see her, she smiles and hugs me. “Evie!”

After that, out in the hall, I grill Mark on his exchange with Landon.

He recounts their conversation, shaking his head sadly. “Why didn’t you tell us he was here? We tried to call before we came.”

I do my best to reassure them.

“He would never take her or anything like that. He’s a neurosurgeon, just like me. We’re married to our jobs.” I wrap my arms around myself. “All of this is my fault. I could have told him, but I waited. I was selfish.”

“No you’re not. I know you. You’re not selfish,” Mark says quietly.

I start to cry, and shake my head. “I was this time.”

I don’t know if Landon can forgive me, and without him, I don’t know how I’ll survive. I accept Mark’s hug and try to pull myself together.

Within the hour, they’ve got discharge papers. We hug goodbye with promises to get together soon. I see Ashtyn once or twice a month, and she knows I’m her birth mother.

“What about Landon? Dr. Jones,” Mark says, hanging behind Ashtyn and Clara. “Do you think he’ll want to get to know her too?”

He wants that—I see it in his eyes. The Deckerts want what’s best for Ash. They know that knowing us, given some strong contextualization and a lot of honest talking, will probably anchor Ashtyn rather than unmoor her.

My eyes fill with tears as I shake my head. “I don’t know. I…maybe. But I don’t know. I need to find him. After he found out, he left.”

Eilert finds me shortly after the Deckerts go. She asks if I’ve seen Landon. I almost tell her, but I realize it’s not mine to tell. I tell her I’m not sure.

“Apparently he just left while he was seeing the girl who just got discharged. No one’s seen him since.”

“I’ll keep a look out for him.”

I call Landon, too, and text him.

‘I’m so sorry. So, so sorry. Please call me. You don’t have to forgive me, but please let me try to explain. I’ll leave and we can talk about it. Anything you want.’

My shift rolls on, through agonizing hours when I’m so distraught that I consider leaving, too. Finally, it’s almost nine o’clock. I have a plan in place to drive right to his house.

I pass Eilert at the nurse desk on floor three as she heads out for the night.

“Evie, you’re about to be paged down to ER.” My pager buzzes at that second, and Eilert looks at me apologetically. “I know you’ve got floor notes, but they’re saying they need another hand down there for a possible spinal cord injury. I’ve got to get moving. Darius is headed out to summer camp tomorrow morning.”

I linger in the stairwell, wiping my eyes.

Downstairs, it’s a madhouse. All the bays are full and EMTs are pouring in with stretchers.

“Wicked wreck at 8^th and Monroe,” I hear someone say. “One van full, no seatbelts, plowed into a smaller car that’s fucking crushed.”