Copyright 2018 by Colleen Hoover

She really is a good baby. I moved to Harper’s crib and looked down at her,
filling with anger. It somehow felt like her fault that I’d had the dream.
Maybe I was misinterpreting my dream. Maybe it wasn’t a premonition.
Maybe it was a warning. If I didn’t do something about Harper before it was too
late, Chastin would die.
I suddenly had this overwhelming urge to rectify what I knew was going to
happen. Never in all my life had a dream been that vivid to me. I felt if I didn’t
do something about it in that moment, it would come true any day. For the first

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time, I couldn’t bear the thought of losing Chastin. It hurt almost as much as the
thought of losing Jeremy.
I didn’t know anything about ending a life, much less the life of an infant.
The one time I’d tried, it resulted in nothing more than a scratch. But I’d heard
of SIDS. Jeremy had made me read about it. It’s not uncommon, but I didn’t
know enough about it to know if they would be able to tell a difference between
suffocation and SIDS.
I’d heard of people choking in their sleep on their own vomit, though. That
would probably be harder to declare an intentional act.
I touched my finger to Harper’s lips. Her head moved back and forth
quickly, thinking it was a bottle. She latched on and began sucking the tip of my
finger, but she wasn’t satisfied. She released my finger and started screaming
again. Kicking. I shoved my finger farther into her mouth.
She was still crying, so I continued to shove. She made a gasping sound, but
was somehow still crying. Maybe one finger wasn’t enough.
I pushed two fingers into her mouth and throat, until my knuckles were
pressed against her gums and she was no longer crying. I watched her for a
moment, and soon, her arms began to stiffen between each violent jerk of her
little body. Her legs locked up.
This is what she would have done to her sister if I hadn’t done it to her first.
I’m saving Chastin’s life.
“She okay?” Jeremy asked.
Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
I pulled my fingers out of Harper’s mouth and picked her up, pressing her
face into my chest so Jeremy couldn’t hear her gasping for air. “I don’t know,” I
said, turning to him. He was making his way across the room. My voice was
frantic. “I can’t make her happy. I’ve tried everything.” I was petting the back of
her head, attempting to show him how concerned I was.
That’s when she puked on me. As soon as she puked, she screamed. Wailed.
Her voice sounded hoarse, and she was gasping between screams. It was a cry
like neither of us had ever heard before. Jeremy quickly grabbed her, pulling her
from me so he could try to soothe her.
He didn’t even care that she had puked on me. He didn’t even look up at me.
He was full of concern, his eyebrows drawn together, his forehead wrinkled as
he inspected her. But out of all that concern he held, none of it was for me. It
was only pointed in Harper’s direction.
I held my breath and walked straight to the bathroom, afraid to breathe in the
smell. It was the one thing I hated most about being a mother. All the fucking
vomit.

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While I was in the bathroom, Jeremy made Harper a bottle. By the time I got
out of the shower, she’d already fallen back to sleep. He was in our bed,
plugging the video monitor back in.
I froze as I was climbing into bed. I stared at the video monitor, at the perfect
view right into Harper and Chastin’s cribs.
How did I forget the fucking monitor?
If he had seen what I was doing to Harper, he would have ended it with me.
How could I have been so careless?
I slept very little that night, wondering what Jeremy would have done to me
had he caught me trying to save Chastin from her sister.

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