Mara was six feet from leaving the hospital with her six-week-old son—until a child protection officer stopped her and accused her of being an unfit mother.

Mara stared at the screen until the blue light burned into her retinas.

*Don't let her sleep.*

She pulled out her phone, snapping quick, high-resolution pictures of the iPad screen, capturing the phone number, the timestamps, and the cold-blooded words. Her hands were shaking so violently she dropped her phone twice onto the carpet before the images were saved to her cloud drive.

Suddenly, footsteps crested the top of the stairs. Heavy, slow, deliberate. Evan.

Mara slid the iPad back into its precise position, wiped the screen against her sleeve, and sprang over to the nursing glider. By the time the doorknob turned, she was sitting with her pump parts assembled on her lap, staring out the window into the bare branches of the oak tree outside.

Evan walked in, holding a steaming mug. "I brought you some chamomile, Mara."

She didn't turn around. "Put it on the dresser."

"You need to drink something warm. You haven't had fluids all day." He stepped closer, placing the ceramic mug beside her. The scent was strange—herbal, but with an underlying sharpness, like crushed aspirin.

"Did you check on Noah?" she asked, keeping her voice as dead and level as stone.

"Claire just got him down in the bassinet downstairs," Evan said softly, resting his hand on her shoulder. Mara had to fight with every fiber of her being not to flinch away from his touch. "She’s incredible with him, Mara. You know, you don't have to carry the whole world on your shoulders. You can just let go."

*Let go.* It sounded like an invitation to die.

"I’m going to pump now," she said. "Close the door."

He lingered for a second, his fingers lingering on the back of her neck before he finally stepped back. "Drink the tea before it gets cold."

As soon as the latch clicked, Mara picked up the mug, walked silently to the en-suite half-bath, and poured the steaming amber liquid down the sink, running the water on low until every trace of the smell vanished.

At 4:00 PM, the front doorbell chimed.

Mara crept to the landing. Below, Claire was answering the door.

"Ms. Porter! Come in," Claire’s voice floated up, smooth as honey. "Evan’s in the kitchen preparing the sanitized bottles. Mara is resting upstairs."

"Actually, I need Ms. Ellison down here," Denise Porter’s clipped voice replied. "An addendum was submitted to our intake portal an hour ago. We need to review it immediately."

Mara descended the stairs before they could summon her. She had combed her hair, splashed ice water on her face, and pulled on a clean, button-down blouse. She walked into the living room with her shoulders squared and her eyes clear.

Denise Porter looked surprised for a fraction of a second, noting Mara’s tidy appearance, but her professional mask clamped back down instantly.

"Ms. Ellison," Denise said, pulling an eight-by-ten glossy photograph from a manila envelope. "Do you recognize this?"

She slid the photo onto the coffee table.

Mara looked down. The photograph was taken from across a street, through the rain-streaked window of a parked vehicle. It showed the alleyway behind the Fourth Street pharmacy, illuminated by the sickly yellow glow of a sodium vapor light.

In the frame was Mara. She was wearing her oversized dark green rain parka, her face pale, her mouth open as if in an aggressive shout.

Standing opposite her, barely two feet away, was a man in an olive-drab army jacket, his face shadowed by a dark baseball cap. He was handing her a small, brown paper bag, and Mara’s fingers were closed around it.

"This was submitted anonymously by a local resident," Denise said. "Along with an allegation that you met with an illicit narcotics distributor at 3:15 AM on Tuesday morning, purchasing non-prescribed sedatives."

Mara felt the floor drop out beneath her feet. "What? No! I was buying gas drops and gripe water inside the store!"

"The pharmacy receipts show you purchased infant drops at 3:28 AM," Denise said calmly. "This timestamp is 3:14 AM. Who is this man, Ms. Ellison?"

"I don't know who that is!" Mara cried, looking wildly from Denise to Evan, who had entered from the kitchen with a look of theatrical horror on his face.

"Mara..." Evan whispered, pressing his hands to his temples. "My God. Are you buying pills? Is that where the grocery money has been going?"

"Evan, shut up!" Mara snarled, turning on him. "I have never seen that man in my life! Look at the jacket—that’s not my parka! My parka doesn't have patches on the sleeve!"

"It has the exact tear on the left pocket that yours has," Claire interjected quietly from the corner, pointing a manicured finger toward the coat hanging on the entryway rack.

Mara snapped her head toward the coat rack. There, hanging innocent and damp against the wall, was her green parka. On the left pocket, a jagged two-inch rip had been mended with black nylon thread.

She had never torn her coat.

Someone had torn it, mended it, and staged this photograph.

"I want a drug test," Mara said, her voice dropping into a razor-sharp whisper. She leaned over the table, staring straight into Denise Porter’s eyes. "Call the lab right now. Take my blood. Take my urine. Take my hair. Do a complete seven-panel toxicology screen right now, Ms. Porter. Because whoever took that picture is setting me up, and if you help them steal my son, I will sue this county until none of you have jobs left."