A SILENT APARTMENT
The nights were worse than the days.

The fridge hummed. Pipes clicked. Every sound reminded me the apartment had been built for silence now.

I kept two things.

Tessa’s wooden recipe box on the counter. Michael’s blue truck on the mantle.

I couldn’t touch them.

I couldn’t move them either.

Six weeks crawled by in sub-zero storage rooms at the warehouse. I worked fourteen-hour shifts because cold was easier than memory.

“Go home,” my supervisor Gary finally said.

Home meant ghosts.

But I went.

THE BRIDGE
It happened under Route 9.

Fog hanging low. Headlights cutting yellow beams.

A dark sedan was pulled over.

A man in a gray sweatshirt stood at the railing.

He looked left.

Right.

Then lifted a wooden box and threw it over.

I hit the brakes.

By the time I reached the riverbank, the box was spinning in the current, drifting toward faster water.

I waded in.

The cold punched through me like a fist.

The box struck a branch.

I lunged.

Grabbed it.

Dragged it onto the rocks.

Opened it.

Inside—a newborn. Lips blue. Wrapped in a stained towel.

Breathing.

EIGHT MINUTES TO THE HOSPITAL
I held him against my chest, skin to skin under my jacket.

“Stay with me,” I whispered.

The hospital was twelve minutes away.

I made it in eight.

“I found him in the river,” I told the nurse. “Someone threw him off the bridge.”

An hour later, the doctor returned.

“He’s stable. Severe hypothermia, but he’s going to make it.”

What happens to him now?

“Foster care,” she said. “We’re short on infant placements.”

“Can I take him?”

LUCAS
Two days later, I brought him home.

Lucas. No last name.