Three months.
Hector would be in foster homes for three months while I jumped through bureaucratic hoops to prove I deserved to raise him.
“And what about him in the meantime?”
“When he’s discharged from the hospital, he will go to a certified temporary foster family. He will receive proper care. You can visit him twice a week under supervision.”
Twice a week. Under supervision. As if I were a threat. As if I wasn’t the one who had saved him from drowning.
That night, I called Father Anthony. I needed references. I needed people who would say I wasn’t crazy, that I was fit, that I could do this. He came to my house the next day. He sat in my kitchen, drinking the same tea I used to make for Lewis when he was a boy.
“Of course I’ll help you,” he said. “You’re one of the strongest women I know. That child is lucky to have you.”
But I didn’t feel strong. I felt old. Tired. Scared.
I was sixty-two years old. How was I going to chase a two-year-old when I was sixty-four? How was I going to help him with his homework when I was seventy? How was I going to be there for his graduation if I made it to eighty?
“I’m too old for this,” I said out loud for the first time.
Father Anthony looked at me over his cup.
“Sarah was ninety years old when she gave birth to Isaac. Age is just a number when there’s love involved.”
I wanted to believe him. I really did.
On the fourth day, Eloise taught me how to care for Hector—how to support his little head, how to change his tiny diapers, how to prepare formula to the exact temperature. My hands trembled at first. I had forgotten how fragile newborns were—how dependent, how terrifyingly delicate.
“You’re doing great,” Eloise would say every time I panicked.
But it didn’t feel great. It felt like walking on thin ice. One wrong move, and everything would shatter.
On the fifth day, Detective Fatima returned with news.
“We found Cynthia’s aunt,” she said. “She lives in a small town a hundred miles from the border. We went to question her, and she hasn’t seen Cynthia in two years. Says they had a fight. Says Cynthia owed her money—three thousand dollars—never paid her back.”
Money.
It always came back to money with Cynthia.
Lewis earned a good salary as an engineer—seventy thousand a year. He had savings. A two-hundred-thousand-dollar life insurance policy. Cynthia was the beneficiary.
“Did she collect the insurance?” I asked.
Fatima nodded.
“Four months ago. Two hundred thousand dollars deposited into her account. Two weeks later, she transferred it all to an offshore account in the Cayman Islands. We’re trying to track it, but it’s complicated.”
Two hundred thousand dollars. The value of my son’s life. And she had hidden it in some tax haven while planning to kill her baby.
“Why?” I said—the question that tormented me every night. “Why kill the baby? She could have given him up for adoption. She could have left him at a hospital. Why try to drown him?”
Fatima was quiet for a long moment.
“There’s a theory,” she finally said. “We’ve been investigating Lewis’s finances. We found something interesting. Two weeks before he died, he changed his will. He left everything to his future children. Not to Cynthia. To his children.”
The air left my lungs.
Lewis knew. Somehow, he knew Cynthia was pregnant, and he changed his will to protect his son.
“She killed him for money,” I whispered.
“We believe so. And then she found out the money would go to the baby if he was born alive. So she decided to eliminate him too.”
The sheer evil of it left me speechless. She had killed my son. She had carried the pregnancy to term. She had given birth alone. And then she had tried to drown her own baby. All for money.
“Do you have enough to arrest her?”
“When we find her, yes. But she’s still missing. She’s smart. She knows we’re looking for her.”
The days turned into weeks. Hector grew stronger. The doctors removed the tubes one by one. He started breathing on his own, feeding on his own, crying with strong, healthy lungs. He was a medical miracle, according to the doctors. No baby who had been through what he had should be doing so well.
But I knew it was more than medicine. It was willpower. It was Lewis’s spirit living in that little body—fighting, surviving, refusing to give up.
I completed all the requirements. The background check came back clean. The medical exam showed I was healthy for my age. The psychological evaluation was tougher. A young woman with glasses asked me questions for three hours.
“How did you handle your son’s death?”
“How do you feel about Cynthia?”
“Are you trying to replace Lewis with this baby?”
That last question angered me.
“I’m not replacing anyone. I’m saving my grandson. It’s different.”
She wrote something down. I didn’t know if it was good or bad.
The home inspection was humiliating. Two women checked every corner. They opened closets, checked the refrigerator, measured the windows to see if they were safe, counted the smoke detectors, asked about my emergency plan in case of a fire.
“You’ll need a certified crib, a changing table, safety gates on all stairs, locks on the cabinets, outlet covers.”
I spent twelve hundred dollars on baby gear. My pension barely covered my basic expenses. I had to use my savings. But I didn’t care. Hector was worth it.
The child care course was the worst. Fifteen young mothers and me. They all looked at me like I was the confused grandmother who had walked into the wrong class. The instructor was twenty-five. She explained things I already knew with insulting slowness.
“Babies need to eat every three hours. Babies cry when they are hungry or wet. Never shake a baby.”
I nodded and took notes, even though I wanted to scream that I had raised a son to adulthood, that I knew exactly what I was doing. But I needed that certificate. So I swallowed my pride and pretended to learn.
Six weeks after finding Hector in the lake, Alene appeared at the hospital with a small smile.
“You’ve completed all the requirements,” she said. “The judge will review your case next week. If all goes well, you could have temporary custody in two weeks.”
Two weeks.
After forty-two days of bureaucratic hell, I could finally take my grandson home.
But that same night, when everything seemed to be getting better, my phone rang. It was Fatima. Her voice was tense.
“Betty, I need you to come to the station now. We found something. Something about Lewis you need to see.”
I arrived at the police station with my stomach in knots. Fatima was waiting for me at the entrance. Her face was more serious than usual. She led me through narrow hallways to an interrogation room. On the table was a cardboard box. Inside, I recognized Lewis’s belongings—his wallet, his watch, his broken phone, the things they returned to me after the accident.
“What is this?” I asked.
“We finally managed to unlock his phone,” Fatima said. “Our technician worked on it for weeks, and we found something.”
She pulled out a manila envelope. She opened it and spread several printed sheets on the table. They were screenshots of text messages between Lewis and Cynthia dated two weeks before his death.
I read the first one. It was from Lewis to Cynthia.
We need to talk. I know about the baby.
Cynthia’s reply:
I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Lewis again:
I found the pregnancy test in the bathroom. Why didn’t you tell me?
A three-hour silence. Then Cynthia:
I wasn’t ready to tell you. I was scared.
Scared of what? I’m your husband. We’re going to be parents. This is wonderful.
Another silence. Then:
I don’t want to have it.
I felt like I’d been punched.
I kept reading. My hands were shaking.
Lewis: What do you mean you don’t want to have it?
Cynthia: I’m not ready. I don’t want to be a mother. I want to travel, to live, not be tied down to a baby.
Lewis: He’s our child.
Cynthia: He’s a mistake.
Lewis: Don’t say that. Please. We can make it work. I’ll help you. My mom will help us.
Cynthia: I don’t want help. I want my life back.
The messages grew more intense—Lewis pleading, Cynthia resisting—until I reached the last exchange, the day before the accident.
Lewis: I spoke to a lawyer. If you decide not to have the baby, I’m divorcing you. And if you have him and don’t want to raise him, I will fight for full custody. I’m not going to let you hurt my child.
Cynthia: You’re going to regret this.
Lewis: Is that a threat?
There was no reply.
The next day, Lewis was dead.
I dropped the papers. Tears streamed down my cheeks uncontrollably.
“She killed him,” I said. “She killed him because he was going to protect the baby.”
“That’s what we believe,” Fatima said. “And there’s more. We checked Cynthia’s phone records from that week. She made three calls to a freelance mechanic—Carlos Medina. We brought him in for questioning.”
“And what did he say?”
“Nothing at first. But when we showed him evidence of the bank transfers Cynthia made to him—two thousand dollars the day before the accident—he started talking. He admitted she paid him to sabotage the brakes on Lewis’s car.”
I felt sick. I had to sit down.
Cynthia had planned everything. She had hired someone to kill my son, and she had made it look like an accident.
“Why would Carlos do something like that?”
“Debts. He gambled. He owed fifteen thousand to dangerous people. Cynthia offered him two thousand immediately and three thousand more later. He accepted. He’s now under arrest as an accomplice to murder.”
“And Cynthia?”
“We have a warrant for her arrest for first-degree murder and attempted murder. But we still haven’t found her. She’s like a ghost.”
I sat in that cold room processing everything. My son had died trying to protect his baby. And that baby was now in the hospital fighting for his life because his own mother had tried to kill him too.
The cruelty of it all was unbearable.
“What happens now?” I asked.
“We keep looking,” Fatima said. “We have her picture in every airport, at every border, alerts in hospitals in case she tries to change her appearance. Someone will recognize her eventually. No one disappears forever.”
But I wasn’t so sure. Cynthia had proven to be smarter and colder than I ever imagined. If she had planned Lewis’s murder in such detail, she probably had an equally elaborate escape plan.
I went back to the hospital that night. I sat by Hector’s incubator. I watched him sleep. So innocent, so oblivious to the horror surrounding him. His very existence had cost his father his life. His mother had tried to kill him. And I was all that stood between him and a system that would see him as just another file.
“Your dad loved you,” I whispered to him. “He died protecting you. And I’m going to finish what he started. I promise you.”
Eloise showed up with coffee. She sat next to me in silence for a while.
“I heard about the messages,” she finally said. “I’m so sorry.”
“I didn’t know Lewis could be so strong,” I said. “He was always gentle, kind. But in those messages, he was a warrior—willing to fight for his son.”
“Love does that,” she said. “It makes you stronger than you ever thought possible.”
She was right. I was feeling it myself. I had never considered myself particularly strong, but now I was fighting the system, fighting time, fighting a fugitive murderer—all for this baby.
The next few days were about preparation. I turned Lewis’s room into a room for Hector. I took down the rock band posters, the soccer trophies, the college photos. I painted the walls a soft yellow. I set up the new crib, the changing table, the musical mobile that played lullabies.
It was painful to dismantle my son’s sanctuary, but it was necessary. Lewis was gone. Hector was alive, and he needed a space to grow.
Father Anthony came to bless the room. He sprinkled holy water in the corners, prayed for Hector’s protection, for my strength, for justice for Lewis.
“God has a plan,” he said. “Even if we don’t always understand it.”
“What kind of plan involves killing a good man and nearly drowning a baby?” I asked bitterly.
