Please...don't

Prologue

"This was a bad idea." She says from the backseat. "Stop the car, we need to go back!"

I step on the accelerator and speed up even more, choosing a different route from the one we came with. I look at her by the front mirror, expecting her to be throwing a tantrum. But she's glued to her seat, frozen in place

She looks up at me and says "Please..." so softly I might have imagined it. A single tear drops down her cheek and she wipes at it with the sleeve of her shirt, "I can't... do this to him"

The roar of the engine drowns the rest of her words as the car speeds up even more.

I check the front mirror again when we're out of the town, and this time she's crying her heart out. I slow down a little, there's no point in distracting her from our whereabouts now anyway, I could totally be heading to a cliff and she wouldn't notice.

"I am sorry" I say finally, "But you know we needed to do this. We've already talked about this, just calm down." She doesn't respond and I add, "Its going to be okay." Which, I guess, was the wrong thing to say because her head jerks up as soon as I say it and I might as well have slapped her on the face. The betrayal her amber eyes are reflecting off is choking.

"Nothing will be okay and we both know it. I just lost my son! I might not ever see my baby anymore and you're telling me to fucking Calm down?" She screams the last sentence and I steer the car away from an incoming car, this is the first time I ever heard her get angry, and... let's just say that I am not very good at dealing with anger.

I sigh, none of this is my fault and I do sympathize with what she's going through but a car crash is not going to help anybody right now.

"I am sorry" I say.

Based on my career, you might expect me to be professional at dealing with people in distress. Not at all saying that I am bad at what I do, I am actually pretty good at it. it hasn't been a month since I was nominated best detective with the highest solved cases in the whole city. But put me in the same room with a crying person and I will only manage to make them sadder.

Or angry. I look at her again and she's hugging her legs staring out the window with fresh tears running down her cheeks.

My heart breaks for her and the baby. She probably will never see him again. And he'll grow with no memories of her. That's the sad part, I guess. That ten years from now, they could cross paths again, but neither of them will recognize the other.

I park the car quietly in the garage and turn off the engine. We sit in silence for a minute and a feeling of emptiness clouds over me. I don't know if it's because I was the one to hold the baby for the last time before putting him down on the porch, but my hands feel so... empty. As if a part of them is missing. I wonder what her hands feel like.

"He said mama" she says after a while

"What?"

I squeeze myself between the front seats and sit beside her. She turns to me and it looks like she aged a decade in the last two hours. "Last night, he... he said mama" she claps her hand on her mouth and more tears start flowing down.

I open my mouth to reply but she cuts me off. "I know... that he is too young to actually say it and that he probably wasn't calling me... but he... he said it and..."

I pull her to me and I hug her tight. Burying her face in the crook of my neck, she starts crying again. She cries for so long; my neck starts hurting. She cries so hard; I start crying too.

I wipe away the tears and take deep breaths to calm myself down. But my vision blurs again by the tears that threaten to fall. I thought I suffered enough. That I am already too numb to feel pain. But I can feel my heart shatter for the thousands time and I am so tired now. Because how many times does a heart need to break before the pieces become too small to come apart? I've familiarized myself to this feeling because this is what I feel when I wake up in the morning and when I go to sleep at night. So I didn't think it was possible but it somehow manages to hurt even more.

"I am sorry" I tell her, composing myself. I pat her back awkwardly, "I am sorry" I say it again. She suddenly sits up and wipes at her eyes. "I am going to go back" she says. "I thought I could... do this. But I just... can't" she stutters.

I shake my head. "You need to calm down. You being like this is not going to help anyone. You know we needed to do this. I understand that you're feeling..."

She shakes her head, "Don't you ever tell me you understand Paula because you don't! have you ever had your child taken from you?" her question throws me off guard. A chubby little face with brown locks and blue eyes fills my vision, "yes" I say, but too quietly for her to hear.

"Exactly" she says, taking my silence as a no

"Alright, I am sorry" I say. Thinking of the right words to say, "but we both know that going back is a stupid idea. Besides, we wouldn't know the place. All the houses look alike and unless we go knock on every single house in the neighborhood, we wouldn't find him" I try hard to sound convincing

She looks up at me with a look that I can't quite place then shakes her head, "I saved the location on google map" then takes out her phone from her pocket.

The same phone I had hidden before we came here.

Shit!

She opens her mouth to say more but her phone's ringtone cuts her off. She steps out of the car after wiping her tears, leaving me completely perplexed.

"How? When... how?" I ask myself, then it hits me. If she's saved the location, it means she knows where the place is.

I am out of the car and running to the house before I know it. I storm inside and up the stairs but freeze outside her room. I am shaking so hard and I can't breathe. I need to do something. Anything.

I can't ever let her go back there

I go to my daughter's room before I do anything stupid. She's sleeping in her bed. With two barbie dolls sharing the bed with her. I sit next to her and immediately relax. She seems uncomfortable so I adjust the pillow, then take all the hair pins she has on. When I am done, she finally relaxes on the bed. And after I calmly think about what I need to do, I hide the car keys in her room then leave after giving her a good night kiss.

At midnight, I sneak out of my bedroom and head for the room across the hall. I slowly open the door then close it behind me. The room is so dark but I can make out Alice's sleeping figure on the bed.

I tiptoe to her nightstand and pick up her phone. I turn it on and I see a picture of my daughter and the baby. It's of her holding him, and him looking equally uncomfortable and happy. The picture is so pretty it's on my lock screen too. Their laugh is so similar and they have the same brown hair they could easily be mistaken for siblings.

I snap from my daze and turn the flashlight on to check on her, but she's deep asleep.

I sigh, relieved and I type the password, the baby's birthday. But it says wrong password and I deflate. She must have changed it after finding her phone in my office.

What now?

Before I think of a plan B, I hear the bed creak. Startled, I turn the flashlight back on and scream

She's staring right at me with her lips silently tipped up in a smirk.