If She Heard (Kate Wise Mystery #7) - Blake Pierce
CHAPTER ONE
Even before the baby arrived, people were calling Kate Wise the Miracle Mother. Upon learning that she was going to be giving birth at the age of fifty-seven, Kate had told no one other than Allen and Melissa. She hadn’t even told anyone at work. Not DeMarco, not Duran…no one. But somehow, word had gotten out. By the time she was five months pregnant, everyone at the bureau knew about it and there were journalists and reporters calling.
Oddly enough, the first journalist who had called her was on her mind as the doctor checked to see how much she was dilated. She’d found the idea of her pregnancy being newsworthy a little ridiculous. But as her doctors had told her and as some Google research had verified, it was rare for a woman beyond fifty to get pregnant—and even more rare for that woman to carry the baby to full term.
But here she was, her water having broken eight hours ago, with her doctor telling her she was eight centimeters dilated and it was almost time.
The first reporter had been a woman from Mother and Baby magazine. Kate had only taken the call out of a need to not be rude. They’d spoken on the phone twice; the second call ended up being more focused on her ability to maintain a second career within the FBI. The reporter had spoken to her as if Kate were some sort of superhero. Kate had never known why, but something about the interview had sat wrong with her for the entirety of her pregnancy.
Because no one should look to me as an example, Kate thought as another contraction went tearing through her more-than-half-a-century-old body. This is torture.
She did not remember her pregnancy with Melissa being this hard. Of course, that had been almost thirty years ago. That had been planned, and there had been no reporters. There had been no thirty-second blips on the evening news about her pregnancy, no nicknames like Miracle Mother to live up to.
“Kate?” the doctor said. His voice tore her out of her thoughts, managing to find a way in through the pain of the latest contraction. “You still with me?”
“Uh-huh.”
It was true, though the world was something of a haze. The pregnancy was high risk. There had been issues from the fourth month on. Worries of low birth weight, a scare where the baby’s heartbeat had been far too slow, and now here he was, three weeks early and projected to weigh about a pound and a half under what the doctor considered safe.
“He’s here, Kate. I need you to push, okay? One more big push and your baby boy will
be—”
Kate pushed, and the room spun. She was vaguely aware of Allen by her side. He was holding her hand, his face next to hers as he coached her on and encouraged her. Kate let out a moan, doing everything she could not to scream. The world started growing dim just as she heard the first cries of her newborn baby son.
Her vision was hazy at best when the doctor placed her son on her chest. She cradled him in her arms and started to cry. She hated the word miracle, as it was tossed around far too often. But feeling the warmth of her baby in her arms, held against her nearly sixty-year-old body, she supposed that’s what this was…a miracle.
It was a nice thought to hang on to as exhaustion swept over her and her vision went from hazy to a complete and perfect field of black.
***
In the coming weeks, Kate was overcome with a huge wave of depression. Now that her son was here—named Michael, after her late husband—she started to obsess over the negatives of being a new mother at the age of fifty-seven. First of all, she had to accept the fact that in the past eighteen months, she had become both a grandmother and a new mother. There was also the fact that by the time this new kid was old enough to go to college, she’d be pushing eighty. And thinking of college opened her eyes to the added expense. She had enough money saved up, but she had made plans for it—namely a lot of traveling after sixty. But now those plans would have to change.
She also wondered how Allen was going to truly handle it all. Sure, he had been great so far. He had been genuinely excited through most of the pregnancy, but now the baby was