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Mia turned her head just enough to see the porch camera again.
“Yes,” she told the dispatcher. “And I need you to hear what Patricia said before she did it.”
The ambulance arrived first.
A paramedic knelt beside her and asked how far along she was.
“Three days,” Mia said.
“Three days from your due date?”
Mia nodded.
His face changed.
Not enough to frighten her more, but enough to tell her that nobody was going to call this dramatic anymore.
They lifted her carefully.
Mrs. Keller stood near the mailbox with both hands pressed to her chest.
When a police officer arrived, the dispatcher was still on the line.
The officer asked Mia what happened.
Mia told him once.
She did not soften it.
“My mother-in-law pushed me,” she said. “My husband saw me fall. Then they left with the crib.”
The officer glanced toward the truck tracks in the snow.
Then toward the camera above the garage.
“You have footage?”
“Yes,” Mia said.
Her voice was weak, but the word was clean.
At the hospital intake desk, someone slid forms toward her on a clipboard.
The nurse put a wristband around her wrist.
A monitor was strapped across her belly.
The baby’s heartbeat filled the room in fast, galloping beats.
Mia turned her head and cried without making a sound.
The nurse touched her shoulder.
“She’s here,” the nurse said. “We’ve got you both.”
Mia held on to that sentence harder than she had held on to anything all morning.
A hospital social worker came in before noon.
Then a police officer returned.
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