Chapter 2 - The Silent Departure and Discovery
The morning clerk at St. Adalbert’s Cemetery did not look up from his ledger when Bella laid the grey cashier's check on the frosted glass counter. He was an old man with nicotine-stained fingers and a black woolen cardigan that smelled of stale coffee and damp limestone. He checked the signature twice against a typed sheet of authorized corporate accounts, stamped the burial permit with a heavy iron lever, and slid a plastic receipt across the wood.
"Friday at nine," he said, his voice as dry as the soil outside. "The grave diggers will have the vault set by eight. Don't be late. We have three more from the county home coming in at ten, and the backhoe doesn't like the cold."
Bella took the receipt and walked out into the grey light of the cemetery lane. The snow was falling again, small, hard grains that bounced off the black wool of her coat—a coat she had borrowed from Deborah's locker at the hotel because her own denim jacket had a torn seam along the shoulder.
She didn't feel relief. She felt empty, like an accounting book that had been balanced by erasing every entry until the pages were nothing but white space.
The penthouse had been completely silent after three o'clock in the morning. Lucas Dracott hadn't touched her. He had simply sat by the window until the sky over the lake turned from black to the color of wet lead, his bloody hand resting on his knee, his eyes fixed on the horizon as if he were waiting for a ship that had sunk a quarter of a century ago. At five, his driver—a thick-necked man in a charcoal overcoat named Marcus—had knocked once on the door, looked at Bella with a face that showed absolutely no surprise, and handed her an envelope containing her uniform badge and a transit pass.
"Mr. Dracott prefers his mornings orderly," Marcus had said before closing the door between them.
Bella walked down the cemetery path toward the bus stop on Milwaukee Avenue. Her body felt heavy, her legs aching with a strange, deep fatigue that she hadn't felt even after sixteen-hour shifts at the Thornbury. When the blue-and-white city bus finally rumbled to the curb, the smell of the diesel exhaust made her stomach turn over with a sudden, violent spasm that forced her to press her hand against her mouth.
"You alright, lady?" the driver asked as she dropped her coins into the slot.
"Just tired," she said, moving quickly toward the back seats before the heat from the floor vents could make her vomit.
Three weeks later, the fatigue hadn't left. It had settled into her bones like the Chicago frost, accompanied by a constant, metallic taste at the back of her tongue and a strange sensitivity to the smell of the pine-scented floor wax the hotel used in the grand ballroom.
She was standing in the staff restroom on the third floor, her hands gripping the edges of the porcelain sink, when Deborah walked in carrying a bucket of clean rags.
"You look like death, Bella," the older woman said, stopping to look at her reflection in the spotted mirror. "Your skin is the color of skim milk. You still grieving Helena?"
"I'm fine," Bella said, but even the effort of speaking made the walls of the restroom seem to sway.
Deborah set her bucket down with a heavy thud. She stepped closer, her eyes dropping from Bella's face to the slight, almost imperceptible way her grey uniform apron hung across her middle. "Bella. When was your last cycle?"
Bella froze. Her mind, usually so quick with dates and figures, suddenly went blank. She tried to calculate the weeks since that Tuesday night in the penthouse, but the numbers wouldn't align. They scattered like dry leaves in the wind.
"No," Bella whispered, her back striking the tiled wall. "No, it was only one night. He didn't... we didn't even..."
"It don't take a week to make a baby, girl," Deborah said, her voice dropping into a low, fierce murmur as she checked the stalls to make sure they were alone. "Did that man hurt you? Did Lucas do something to you up there?"
"No," Bella said quickly, her hand rising to protect her stomach by instinct. "No, he didn't touch me like that. It was... it was later. Before I left. I was so tired, Deborah. I don't even remember the time."
"You need to go to the clinic down on 26th," Deborah said, her fingers closing tightly around Bella's arm. "And you don't tell nobody in this building. You hear me? If the management thinks you're carrying a Dracott bastard, you won't just lose your badge. You'll disappear from the schedule so fast your head will spin."
The clinic on 26th Street smelled of wet boots and cheap floor cleaner. Bella sat on a vinyl bench for four hours between an elderly man with a hacking cough and a young girl holding a crying infant wrapped in a faded yellow blanket.
When the nurse finally called her name, the doctor—a tired-looking woman with grease stains on her white coat—didn't look at Bella's face until she had finished looking at the ultrasound screen.
"Well, Bella," the doctor said, turning the monitor so Bella could see the two tiny, flickering pulses of white light against the grey background. "It looks like your forty-nine thousand dollars bought you more than a funeral."
Bella stared at the screen. Her heart felt like it had stopped beating entirely. "What is that?"
"Those are heartbeats," the doctor said, her finger tracing the two distinct shapes in the dark. "Two of them. You're eleven weeks along with twins. And judging by the development, they're healthy. Though I suggest you start eating something other than white toast and tea if you want them to stay that way."
Bella lay back against the paper liner of the examination table, her ears ringing with the sound of her own blood. Twins. Two children whose father was a man who destroyed doors, a man who spent his nights looking for ghosts in the dark of a hotel penthouse.
"Can I have the printout?" she asked, her voice barely a breath.
May you like
"Sure," the doctor said, clicking the print button on the machine. "But if I were you, I'd find the father before the third trimester hits. Twins are expensive, Bella. Especially in this city."
Bella took the small, slick square of thermal paper and tucked it inside her shoe, beneath the heel of her sock. She didn't have a phone to scan it, and she didn't have a drawer at home that couldn't be opened by a landlord with an eviction notice. It was the only secret she owned, and she intended to keep it where no one else could tread.
