“Hello, Sharon,” my mother-in-law whispered to my newborn daughter. “You came back to me.”

We were discharged thirty-six hours later. The drive home from Greenville Memorial Hospital was quiet, punctuated only by the soft, rhythmic snuffles of Lily in her rear-facing car seat. Every time we stopped at a red light, I turned my head to ensure she was still breathing, that she was safe, that the world outside the tinted windows couldn't reach her.

Tyler had spent the previous day fighting a digital war. Deborah had finally taken down the public photo after Tyler threatened to bar her from the house, but the damage was already done. Relatives had taken screenshots. A distant cousin in Savannah had sent flowers to our home addressed to *“Baby Sharon Hart and Parents.”*

When Tyler pulled the car into the driveway of our two-story craftsman in the Augusta Road neighborhood, I exhaled for the first time in two days. Our home was supposed to be our sanctuary.

Tyler carried the car seat inside while I shuffled carefully behind him, clutching my abdomen. We stepped through the front door, expecting the quiet stillness of an empty house.

Instead, the air smelled intensely of lavender floor wax and mothballs.

“Tyler?” I whispered, freezing in the foyer.

From the top of the stairs came the rhythmic, unmistakable sound of a wooden rocking chair. *Creak. Creak. Creak.*

Tyler set the car seat gently on the hardwood floor and stepped in front of me, his posture stiffening. “Mom?” he called out loudly. “Are you up there?”

The creaking stopped. Soft footsteps pad-padded across the upstairs hallway. Deborah appeared at the top of the landing.

She was wearing a pale yellow cardigan and a denim skirt, her silver hair pulled back into a neat chignon. In her arms, she held a stack of folded linens. Her face broke into a broad, serene smile as if she were hosting an afternoon tea party.

“Oh, you’re home!” she chirped, descending the staircase with the graceful poise of a woman who had never doubted her welcome in any room she entered. “I knew you’d be exhausted, Julia. I let myself in with the emergency key from the garden pot to make sure everything was properly prepared.”

“Properly prepared?” Tyler said, his voice rising in alarm. “Mom, we told you we needed forty-eight hours to settle in alone. We asked you specifically not to come over.”

“Well, you didn't know what needed to be done, darling,” she said smoothly, bypassing Tyler entirely and walking straight toward the car seat where Lily was sleeping. She knelt beside it, her face softening into an expression that bordered on reverent worship. “Look at her. She knows her grandmother is here.”

“Deborah, what did you do upstairs?” I asked, my voice trembling with a mixture of rage and physical weakness.

Deborah stood up, smoothing her skirt. Her eyes were bright, too bright, gleaming with a manic sort of triumph. “I fixed the nursery. That pale green you two picked out was so sterile, Julia. It looked like a doctor’s office. A baby girl needs warmth. She needs her family's heritage.”

I didn't wait for Tyler. Ignoring the sharp throb in my pelvis, I marched past her, gripping the banister as I hauled myself up the stairs. Tyler came running right behind me.

When I reached the threshold of Lily’s nursery, my breath hitched in my throat.

The pale green walls were still there, but the four white wooden letters Tyler had hand-carved and mounted above the crib—L-I-L-Y—were gone. In their place on the wall, four small holes leaked drywall dust onto the carpet. The wooden letters were lying in the trash can next to the changing table, tossed aside like broken twigs.

The modern, organic cotton sheets we had bought had been stripped from the mattress. In their place was a faded, yellowed set of vintage 1980s crib sheets patterned with faded pink teddy bears. On the dresser sat a silver-plated brush set tarnished with age, and draped over the back of the rocking chair was an infant dress made of stiff, yellowed lace.

Pinned to the collar of the vintage dress was an ancient, laminated baptismal tag. It read: *Sharon Lynn Hart, June 14, 1978.*

“What have you done?” I choked out, spinning around to face Deborah, who had glided silently up the stairs behind us. “What have you done to my daughter’s room?”

Deborah didn't flinch. Her smile was placid, almost pitying. “I’m preserving her legacy, Julia. You’re from out of state. You don’t understand how our family operates. Sharon was stolen from us before she had a chance to live. Now she’s here, and I won't allow her to be erased a second time.”

Tyler walked over to the trash can, reached in, and pulled out the wooden letters spelling our daughter’s name. His hands were shaking violently. “Mom, get out.”

Deborah blinked, as if struck. “Tyler?”

“Get out of our house,” Tyler shouted, the roar reverberating off the nursery walls. Downstairs, the sudden noise woke Lily, and her thin, newborn wail cut through the air. “Give me the emergency key. Right now.”

Deborah’s expression hardened, the sweet matriarch dissolving into something brittle and terrifying. She reached into her cardigan pocket, pulled out the brass key, and dropped it onto the hardwood floor. It clattered between Tyler’s boots.

“You’re letting her poison you, Tyler,” Deborah whispered, her eyes locking onto mine with an unblinking, malevolent clarity. “She doesn't know who our baby really is. But you do. And blood always calls to blood.”