Chapter 2 - Rachel Said She Knew Lily
For several seconds, Adrian could only stare at her.
The crying in his arms kept going, hot and relentless, but it sounded farther away now, like everything in the cabin had slipped behind a sheet of glass.
“How do you know that name?” he asked.
Rachel glanced once at Monica, then at sleeping Emma, then back to Adrian. Her expression was no longer simple concern. It was something heavier. Recognition mixed with restraint. The look of someone deciding, in real time, how much truth could be safely spoken in a crowded cabin.
“I knew Lily at St. Catherine’s,” she said quietly.
Adrian’s brows drew together.
“St. Catherine’s Hospital?”
Rachel nodded.
“I was on postpartum and newborn rotation six months ago.”
Monica, still standing beside Adrian in the aisle, went very still. Whatever she had expected this flight to bring, it had not been this.
Adrian looked down at Lucas. Then back at Rachel.
“You were there?”
“Yes.”
The baby let out another exhausted cry and pushed weakly at the bottle with one tiny fist.
Without leaving her seat, Rachel spoke in the same calm tone she might have used in a nursery at three in the morning.
“Don’t bring the bottle straight in from the front. He’s already fighting it. Try turning him slightly onto his side against you, then touch the nipple to the corner of his mouth first.”
Adrian hesitated.
Then he did exactly what she said.
He shifted Lucas a little lower, angled him more securely against his chest, and touched the bottle at the corner of the baby’s mouth rather than forcing it toward the center. Lucas still fussed and twisted away, but less violently.
Rachel watched closely.
“He’s overtired,” she said. “And he’s looking for the person who used to calm him before he fed.”
Adrian’s jaw tightened.
“She’s gone.”
Rachel’s eyes softened, but her voice stayed steady.
“I know.”
The cabin noise came back little by little—the low engine hum, the rustle of newspapers, the faint clink of ice from somewhere farther back. Monica quietly crouched a little so she no longer towered over Adrian, giving him space while remaining nearby.
Adrian stared at Rachel with a growing disbelief that seemed to deepen rather than fade.
“What exactly do you mean, you knew Lily?”
Rachel folded her hands once in her lap, then opened them again.
“I took care of her after Lucas was born. Three night shifts. I remember her very clearly.”
Something in Adrian’s face flickered at that.
He had spent six months learning how different the word clearly could feel, depending on whose memory you were talking about. His own memories of that hospital had never stopped feeling fractured around the edges—too bright in some places, blank in others. Machines. Forms. Hallway chairs. Lily pale against white sheets. Someone saying she needed rest. Someone else saying he needed to wait.
He had never been sure which moments belonged to the actual week and which had been sewn together later by grief.
Rachel studied him for another beat.
“She talked about you,” Rachel added.
Adrian laughed once, short and humorless.
“That doesn’t tell me much.”
“No,” Rachel said. “It doesn’t.”
Lucas whimpered again, then rooted weakly at Adrian’s shirt. The bottle remained near his mouth, but he would not latch onto it.
Rachel’s gaze dropped to the baby’s face.
“He has her eyes,” she said softly.
Adrian did not answer.
Maybe because he knew.
Maybe because hearing it from her made the truth newly unbearable.
Then Rachel said, “Lily asked me for a favor before I left the hospital.”
Adrian’s whole body went still.
“What favor?”
Rachel held his gaze.
“She asked me to give you something.”
The plane seemed to narrow around those words.
Adrian tightened his hold on Lucas without meaning to.
“What are you talking about?”
Rachel’s expression changed again—this time into the face of someone who had carried a burden long enough to know exactly where the sharp edges were.
“She made me promise I would not hand it to you immediately,” Rachel said.
Adrian stared at her.
“What?”
“I was supposed to wait.”
“For what?”
Rachel looked down at Lucas, then back up at the man holding him.
“For this,” she said.
May you like
Adrian’s throat went dry.
And before he could ask what that meant, Lucas finally made a small, desperate attempt to take the bottle—just enough to prove the next answer mattered more than anything else Rachel had said so far.
