7. No Claim
Chapter seven
No Claim
By the time the labor reached its peak, the pain was no longer coming in waves—it was a sheer, unbroken wall. I gripped the edge of the mattress Holt had dragged from the bedroom to the living room floor, trying not to scream.
Eight hours had passed since my water broke on the slate tiles.
Outside, the torrential autumn rain was still punishing the mountain, hammering the metal roof with a deafening, mechanical roar.
The mudslide had completely severed us from the valley below, trapping us in a glowing, kerosene-lit box while the barometric pressure crushed the air out of the room.
Holt knelt beside the coffee table. The flickering yellow light of a lantern illuminated him in the gloom. He had a battery-operated ham radio pressed to his ear, his thumb hovering over the transmit button as he tried to pull a signal through the atmospheric interference of the storm.
The crackle and hiss of radio static filled the space beneath the pounding rain.
“—track the time between…” Della’s voice broke through the static, tinny and distorted. “Holt, do you copy? Repeat, do you copy?”
Holt pressed the mic. His voice was low, carrying no trace of the panic that was currently drowning me. “I copy. Contractions are three minutes apart. Lasting forty to fifty seconds.”
“She’s moving fast,” Della said, the signal fading and surging back. “Her body is stressed. You need to check her dilation. Have you sterilized your hands?”
“Boiled water and iodine,” Holt confirmed. He looked over at me, his slate-gray eyes entirely focused.
“You have to stay calm, Holt,” Della’s voice warned through the static. “If she tears, or if the baby is breech—”
“I’m calm,” Holt interrupted, cutting off the warnings before I could hear the rest of them. “We’re handling it.”
He set the radio down on the table and moved across the floorboards to the edge of the mattress.
The heat radiating from the cast-iron stove was blistering, but my entire body was shaking with cold, violent tremors.
My sweat-soaked T-shirt clung to my skin, and the room smelled sharply of copper, burning wood, and stale sweat.
A new contraction seized my lower back, wrapping around my pelvis like a tightening band of iron.
“Holt,” I gasped, my fingers digging blindly into the rough canvas of his shirt as he leaned over me. “She’s too early. I’m barely thirty-four weeks. Her lungs—”
“Her lungs are functioning,” Holt said, gripping my forearms and anchoring me to the mattress. “She’s been kicking you for a month. She is strong. Look at me.”
I couldn’t. I squeezed my eyes shut, thrashing my head against the pillow as the contraction peaked.
All of my intellect, my careful planning, the legal traps I had spent the last five weeks building to destroy Chase—it was all stripped away.
The money didn’t matter. The revenge didn’t matter.
I wasn’t an architect anymore. I was an animal caught in a trap, consumed by the physical demand of keeping my child alive.
If she died here, on the floor of a log cabin, because my husband had driven me into hiding, Chase wouldn’t just have taken my money.
He would have taken my entire reason for surviving the fire.
“Wren. Open your eyes.” Holt’s voice wasn’t gentle. It was a direct, uncompromising command.
I opened them.
“I can’t do this here,” I sobbed, the pain completely overriding my pride. “I need a hospital. I need an epidural.”
“You’re doing it here,” Holt said, his face inches from mine. He didn’t waste time coddling me. He set the pace. “Four seconds in. Now. Breathe with me.”
He inhaled sharply through his nose. I mirrored him, dragging the hot, heavy air into my lungs.
“Hold,” he ordered. He counted the seconds on his fingers, keeping his eyes locked on mine. “Out through the mouth.”
I blew the air out, my jaw trembling violently. Slowly, agonizingly, the iron band around my stomach began to loosen. The contraction ebbed, leaving me hollowed out and gasping for air.
“Good,” Holt murmured. He grabbed a clean, damp cloth from the basin and wiped the sweat from my forehead. “You’re doing exactly what you’re supposed to do.”
The ham radio on the coffee table gave a long, high-pitched squeal of feedback.
Holt reached for it, pressing the receiver. “Della?”
Nothing but heavy, rhythmic static answered him.
“Della, come back.”
The static hissed, hollow and unbroken. Either the storm had knocked out the county relay tower, or the radio’s battery pack had finally died. Holt adjusted the dial, sweeping through the frequencies, but the channels were entirely dead.
He set the radio down and looked at me. The silence inside the cabin felt heavier than the rain outside.
“She’s gone,” I whispered, a fresh wave of panic making it hard to swallow. “Holt, we don’t have a doctor.”
“We don’t need one,” Holt said. He moved to the foot of the mattress.
He had lined the floor with clean towels and laid out the sterile instruments from Della’s medical bag—scissors, clamps, a suction bulb, and heavy gauze.
He looked like a man preparing to hold a fire line against a crown fire: entirely present, entirely unbothered by the odds.
He gently separated my knees. “I need to check you, Wren. Just breathe.”
I stared at the heavy log beams of the ceiling, my hands gripping the edges of the mattress pad as he examined me. The physical vulnerability was terrifying, but I didn’t feel an ounce of shame in front of him. He moved with clinical, steady precision.
When he looked back up at me, his jaw was set.
“Well?” I asked, my voice shaking.
“You’re fully dilated,” Holt said, moving up to kneel beside my shoulder. He slid his callused hand behind my neck, supporting my head.
“Already?”
“She’s not waiting for the storm to break,” Holt said. He locked his gaze onto mine. The deep, grinding build of the next contraction was already starting in my lower back, coiling for the strike. “Next contraction, you bear down. It’s time to push.”
“No.” I shook my head, my chest heaving. “I don’t have anything left. I haven’t slept. I can’t—what if she gets stuck? What if I do it wrong?”
“She’s not stuck,” Holt said, gripping my shoulder hard enough to ground me. “The head is right there.”
The pain hit, blinding and absolute. My body arched instinctively off the mattress as I let out a long, guttural scream.
“Push, Wren,” Holt ordered, his voice cutting straight through my panic.
“I can’t!” I sobbed, collapsing back against his arm.
Holt leaned down, his face hovering right above mine. “Chase put you in a burning house, and you walked out,” he said, his voice dropping into a fierce, gravelly register. “He tried to kill this baby, and you kept her alive for five weeks. You are not quitting now. Bear down and push.”
His words hit exactly where they needed to.
Behind my eyes flashed the image of Chase standing on the porch, methodically dragging my grandmother’s heavy cedar bench across the doorframe. The memory of the smoke burning my throat. The image of my mother weeping into his chest in the ruins of the house while he played the ‘hero’.
I pushed the terror aside, letting a fierce, single-minded anger take its place.
I took a massive, ragged breath, tucked my chin to my chest, and pushed.
The physical pain was all-consuming. It felt as though my body was splitting in half, tearing at the seams. I gripped Holt’s forearm so hard I felt the muscles bunch beneath his skin, and I put every ounce of my anger and fading strength into the push.
“Keep going,” Holt commanded, his voice cutting through the ringing in my ears. “Ten seconds. Keep pushing.”
I held the push until my lungs burned, letting out a guttural, ragged cry as the contraction finally began to wane.
I collapsed backward onto the pillow, gasping for air, my entire body shaking with exhaustion and shock.
Sweat stung my eyes. The heat from the cast-iron stove was oppressive, pressing down on me in the dim, flickering lantern light.
“You’re doing it,” Holt said. He shifted quickly to the foot of the mattress, his hands poised and ready. “The head is crowning. Next contraction, you give me everything you have left. Do you hear me?”
I nodded blindly, unable to speak.
The reprieve lasted less than sixty seconds. The iron band wrapped around my spine again, tightening with terrifying speed.
“Now,” Holt said.
I braced my feet against the mattress and bore down. The pressure was immense, a localized agony that eclipsed the roaring of the rain on the metal roof. I squeezed my eyes shut, pushing until the blood roared in my ears, pushing until I had absolutely nothing left.
“Okay, stop!” Holt yelled, his voice sharp and loud in the small cabin. “Stop pushing, Wren. Pant. Short breaths.”
I broke the push, gasping sharply, my chest heaving.
“The head is out,” Holt said, his tone dropping back into a steady, intense focus. “The cord isn’t around her neck. One more push for the shoulders. Nice and easy. On my count.”
I waited for the peak of the contraction, feeling the terrifying, suspended tension in my body.
“Go,” Holt said.
I gave one final, agonizing effort. The resistance broke. A sudden, massive release of pressure flooded my pelvis, followed by the slippery, wet weight of the baby sliding free.
I fell back onto the mattress, completely drained.
The cabin was dead silent, save for the relentless drumming of the storm outside.
I forced my eyes open, struggling to sit up on my elbows. Holt was kneeling at the foot of the bed, holding a tiny, motionless form covered in vernix and blood. The baby was terrifyingly still, her skin a mottled, dusky purple in the yellow lantern light.
“Holt,” I choked out, a fresh wave of panic slamming into me. “She’s not crying. Why isn’t she crying?”
Holt didn’t answer. He didn’t waste a second.
He laid her gently on the sterile towel, grabbed the blue rubber bulb syringe from Della’s medical kit, and immediately squeezed the air out of it.
He inserted the tip into the baby’s mouth and released the bulb to suction the fluid, then repeated the motion in each tiny nostril.
The silence stretched. Two seconds. Three seconds.
“Come on, kid,” Holt muttered, his voice tight. He rubbed a heavy towel vigorously up and down her back, stimulating her lungs. “Breathe.”
I held my breath, bracing myself against the silence of the room.
Then, a small, violent shudder ran through her fragile body.
Her chest hitched. Her mouth opened.
A sharp, piercing wail shattered the quiet of the cabin.
The sound was raw and reedy, yet potent enough to cut through the noise of the rain. As she screamed, the dusky purple color of her skin rapidly flushed to a bright, angry, healthy pink.
I took a ragged, desperate breath. I broke down, a silent sob shaking my frame as the tears finally fell.
“She’s got a set of lungs,” Holt said. He let out a harsh breath of relief, his broad shoulders finally dropping as he looked down at her.
He reached for the sterile plastic clamps in the kit, snapping one onto the pulsing umbilical cord, then another an inch away.
He picked up the medical scissors and cut the cord in one smooth motion.
He moved quickly, wiping the blood and fluid from her skin with a clean cloth. He grabbed a warmed, thick cotton towel he had kept near the stove.
Holt stood up and moved to the top of the mattress. He knelt beside my shoulder, laid the baby directly onto my bare chest, and draped the towel securely over her back.
The warm, solid weight of her settling against my chest was the only thing holding me together.
I wrapped my shaking arms around her, pulling her close.
She was tiny—definitely premature, weighing no more than five pounds—but she was vibrating with life, her small head rooting blindly against my collarbone.
“You’re okay,” I whispered into her fine, dark hair, the smell of clean cotton and amniotic fluid filling my senses. “I’ve got you. You’re safe.”
I rested my chin against her head, listening to the tiny, rapid thud of her heartbeat against my own. The adrenaline finally receded. My limbs turned to dead weight, the sheer exhaustion of the last ten hours finally claiming me.
Holt went to work cleaning the area. He disposed of the medical waste, swapped the soiled towels for dry ones, and efficiently packed Della’s kit away.
He moved quietly, letting me have the moment.
When he was finished, he brought over a thick wool blanket and tucked it securely over my legs and around the baby’s back, locking the warmth in.
He didn’t walk away. Dropping to the floor right next to the mattress, he rested his back against the base of the leather sofa.
He pulled his knees up, draping his forearms across them.
In the dim light of the kerosene lamp, he looked utterly drained, the sharp lines of his face softened by fatigue.
The steady, rhythmic rise and fall of his chest was a quiet comfort in the shadowy room.
I looked down at the baby. Her crying had faded into small, snuffly breaths. She was asleep, her tiny face relaxed against my skin.
I studied her features. The delicate curve of her forehead, the small, defined bow of her lips. The blinding terror of the delivery was gone. In its wake, a cold, absolute certainty remained.
The waiting was over. The vulnerability of the pregnancy, the physical limitations that had kept me trapped in an armchair while my husband dismantled my life—it was all gone.
“Esther,” I said quietly, breaking the silence in the room.
Holt turned his head, looking at us.
“Her name is Esther,” I repeated, tracing a finger lightly over the baby’s cheek.
“Esther made it,” Holt said, his voice a low, rough rumble.
“Thank you,” I said, meeting his gray eyes. “For everything today. For all of it.”
“You did the work,” Holt replied simply. He didn’t demand gratitude, and he didn’t take credit. He just sat there, a silent guard at the edge of the firelight.
I looked back down at my daughter. The fierce drive that had kept me alive behind the barricaded door shifted into an urgent need to fight back.
I was a mother now. The person who had tried to take this moment from me, who had tried to burn this child alive for a payout, was sitting in the city, spending my money and performing his ‘grief’ for the cameras.
“She has his nose,” My voice dropped flat. “I hate that she has his nose.”
“She’s yours,” Holt said from the shadows. “He doesn’t get a claim on her. He doesn’t get a claim on anything.”
I closed my eyes, listening to the relentless rain battering the metal roof. My body was broken, bleeding, and entirely exhausted, but my thoughts were absolutely clear.
Chase Powell thought he had eliminated us. He was about to find out how wrong he was.