“Baby, who did this?”
Her mouth opened.
Nothing came out.
I took her face between my palms as gently as I could.
“Sophie. Look at me.”
She did.
“Who did this to you?”
Her teeth chattered.
Then she whispered a name.
“Caroline.”
I froze.
“Jake's mother?”
Sophie nodded.
The room seemed to tilt.
Caroline Whitmore.
The woman who had smiled beside me in wedding photographs twelve hours earlier.
The woman who had raised a champagne glass and toasted my daughter.
The woman who had spent eighteen months calling Sophie “the daughter she never had.”
I helped Sophie to the sofa.
When I reached for my phone, she grabbed my wrist.
“No police.”
“What?”
“No police, Mom.”
“Sophie, somebody attacked you.”
“They said they'd kill me.”
“Who?”
“All of them.”
I stared at her.
“All of who?”
Sophie began crying.
Not loudly.
That somehow made it worse.
Her shoulders shook while she fought to keep her voice down, as if Caroline might still be standing outside the door.
