CHAPTER FORTY
JACK
Dusk settles over the sanctuary, painting the dense native bush in shades of gold and amber.
Silver ferns unfurl at the edges of the path, their undersides catching what little light remains.
The air carries the earthy scent of damp soil and native herbs, a primordial fragrance unique to New Zealand’s ancient forests.
I follow the familiar path deeper into the gully, away from the estate’s manicured grounds, seeking solitude in the one place that has always brought me peace.
My mind won’t stop replaying the scene from the boat—that tiny, still baby in my hands, skin bluish, umbilical cord having been wrapped around his neck.
In all my years as a paramedic, few moments have terrified me more than that silent newborn, the mother’s panicked question hanging in the air: “Why isn’t he crying? ”
I’d kept my face neutral, my hands steady, but inside I’d been screaming.
The improvised bulb syringe had been pure desperation, muscle memory from similar situations, albeit with proper equipment.
Those seconds between clearing the airway and hearing that first indignant cry had stretched into eternity.
We’d been lucky. So lucky.
I pause at the entrance to one of the observation hides, leaning against the wooden structure, allowing myself to feel the full weight of what could have happened.
It wasn’t the first time I’d stood at the edge of life and death like that.
Unbidden, the memory surfaces—one of my first major trauma calls as a new medic in the city.
A pregnant woman, thirty-four weeks along, involved in a high-speed rollover on the Beltway.
When we get there, she is unresponsive, barely a pulse.
Her husband had been driving—dazed but conscious, screaming her name through the cracked windshield.
We work her in the back of the rig, hands slick with blood, compressions bouncing both mother and baby with each desperate cycle.
I remember shouting vitals to the hospital over the radio, begging for a trauma bay and OB team to be standing by.
I remember the smell of diesel and adrenaline. I remember her eyes—open, but gone.
They do a postmortem C-section right there in the ER trauma bay. We keep compressions going while pulled her onto the table, trying to buy them seconds. Just seconds. But it was already too late.
They deliver the baby anyway, tiny, blue, and impossibly still. I stand there, chest heaving, still wearing the blood we’d fought through to get her there. And I watch as the OB team calls time.
I draw a shaky breath, the memory still raw despite the years. Today could have gone the same way. One small deviation—a slower response, a less effective makeshift suction, a more severe complication—and that baby might not have taken his first breath.
What strikes me most, thinking back on the emergency, is Sophia’s unshakable calm.
She’d handled the precipitous delivery, the nuchal cord, everything with the same quiet competence she brings to the ER.
Never once letting Hannah see the danger, never breaking the fiction that everything was proceeding normally, protecting that new mother from the terror of how close they’d come to tragedy.
I’d known Sophia was extraordinary from the very first time I’d dropped a patient off at Metro General, and got to see her work. Seeing her in that crisis, maintaining her composure while literally holding lives in her hands…it had only confirmed what I already knew.
She was the strongest person I’d ever met.
And I’d betrayed her trust completely.
The sanctuary is quiet around me, the kiwis not yet emerging for their nightly foraging. I move to a fallen log and sit heavily, the weight of everything—the near miss on the boat, the situation with Sophia, my own deception—crushing down on me.
From this secluded spot, I can see a slice of the main house in the distance, lights glowing warmly against the darkening sky. Sophia and Madison are in there, probably enjoying dinner with my family, while I hide in the woods like a coward.
The sound of footsteps on the path startles me. No one comes to the sanctuary at this hour except—
“Jack?”
Sophia’s voice, soft in the gathering darkness. I turn to see her silhouetted against the fading light, her figure unmistakable even in shadow.
“Here,” I call, my voice rougher than intended.
She approaches cautiously, picking her way along the path with careful steps. As she draws closer, I can see she’d been crying—her eyes puffy, her usually composed features drawn with emotion.
“Are you okay?” she asks, stopping a few feet away.
The simple question—her concern for me despite everything—breaks something inside me. A laugh that is more like a sob escapes my throat.
“No,” I admit, scrubbing a hand over my face. “Not really.”
She hesitates, then moves to sit beside me on the log, close but not touching. “What’s wrong?”
I shake my head, struggling to articulate the storm inside.
“That baby today…he wasn’t breathing at first.” My voice cracks.
“All I could think about was another call, years ago. A pregnant woman in a car wreck—thirty-four weeks. We did CPR all the way to the hospital, but by the time we got there, she was gone. They tried a crash C-section, but…it was too late. We lost them both.”
The words tumble out, unstoppable now. “We were so close to that today. So damn close. If the improvised suction hadn’t worked, if the cord had been tighter around his neck, if you hadn’t recognized the issue immediately…”
“But it did work,” Sophia says softly. “You acted quickly, and the baby’s fine. Hannah’s fine.”
“This time,” I whisper. “This time we got lucky.”
To my horror, I feel tears welling, the professional distance I maintain in crises crumbling now in the aftermath. I turn away, not wanting her to see this breakdown on top of everything else.
“Jack,” Sophia says, her voice achingly gentle. “Jack. Look at me.”
I can’t. Shame and residual fear keep my gaze fixed on the ground.
Then her hand is on my arm, the first deliberate touch she’d initiated since the revelation. The simple contact shatters what remains of my control. The tears come in earnest then, my shoulders shaking with the force of them.
“I’m sorry,” I gasp between ragged breaths. “I’m so sorry.”
Without a word, Sophia moves closer, her arms encircling me. I stiffen in surprise before melting into her embrace, my face pressed against her shoulder as emotion overwhelms me.
We stay like that for long minutes, my tears gradually subsiding, her hand movingin slow, comforting circles on my back. When I finally pull away, embarrassed by my breakdown, her own eyes were wet with silent tears.
“I didn’t mean to—” I begin.
“It’s okay,” she interrupts. “You don’t always have to be strong, Jack. Not with me.”
The simple acceptance in her voice stuns me. After everything, after my deception, she is still offering comfort, still seeing beyond the surface to what lies beneath.
“I know about Troy,” she says quietly.
The abrupt change of subject catches me off-guard. “What!?”
“I know what he was posting online. What you confronted him about.” Her eyes hold mine steadily despite the tears still clinging to her lashes. “Emma showed me the screenshots.”
“What? How did this—” I struggle to process this unexpected turn.
“Troy apparently became the main character on the internet today. Some viral TikTok thing. Madison showed it to me.” A grim smile touches her lips briefly. “One thing led to another, and…Emma told me everything.”
I run a hand through my hair, mortified. “Sophia, I never meant for you to see those posts. The things he said—”
“About women. About me. About Madison.” Her voice hardens on her daughter’s name. “His own daughter, Jack. His own flesh and blood, and he sees her as a ‘liability’ to be ‘controlled.’”
The raw pain in her voice makes me ache to hold her again, but I remain still, uncertain of my place. “I’m sorry, Sophia. I’m so sorry you had to see that.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asks, the question lacking accusation, just genuine curiosity.
I choose my words carefully. “It wasn’t my place to come between Madison and her father. I didn’t want to be the reason you had to restrict her access to him. I just…I couldn’t bear the thought of her finding those posts someday, seeing how he really views her.”
“So you confronted him yourself. Made him take it all down. And never said a word to me about any of it.” Her eyes search mine. “You protected Madison without seeking any credit.”
I shrug uncomfortably. “It was the right thing to do.”
“And by doing it quietly, you ensured Madison could still have a relationship with her father, strained as it might be.” She shakes her head slowly. “That level of consideration…after everything I thought about you when I discovered your deception…”
I reach for her hand, hope flickering at this small opening. “Sophia, I never meant to—”
She pulls back suddenly, her face shifting from gratitude to something harder, more resolute. “No, Jack. My turn to talk. And you are going to listen.”
She begins to pace, the carefully constructed walls around her heart starting to crumble, revealing the raw hurt beneath.
“Do you have any idea what it felt like, standing in that house, meeting your mother who called you ‘Jackson,’ seeing the sheer scale of all this, and realizing that the man I’d let into my life, into Madison’s life, was a stranger? ”
She whirls back to face me. “I already told you how Troy viewed me, Jack. How he systematically tore down my confidence, my independence, my sense of self-worth until I barely recognized the woman in the mirror.” Her voice breaks, but she pushes on, the words tumbling out, fueled by years of suppressed pain and fresh betrayal.
“And for years— years —I let him convince me that was normal.”
My face is a mask of anguish. I reach for her, but she recoils. “Don’t.”