Page 1 of The Right to Remain

Prologue

Averywas officially off the list of baby names.

Helena had known it was a boy since the first sonogram. The big day was just three weeks away, and her list of names, covering virtually the entire alphabet, had been narrowed down to two. The final cut was made with the first named storm of the season that was bearing down on Florida’s east coast. Miamians were still clinging to the hope that Hurricane Avery would turn north in the next twenty-four hours—nothing against their friends in Fort Lauderdale and Palm Beach—but Helena took it as a sign.

“Austen,” she now said. “His name will be Austen Mikhail Pollard.”

Helena was outside the Miami Conservatory in ninety-degree heat with a handful of volunteers. They were making the seventy-year-old dance studio “hurricane-ready”—shuttering windows, bringing potted plants inside, and clearing the alley of discarded bottles and other loose items that could become missiles in hundred-mile-per-hour winds.

“Mikhail?” her friend Sylvia asked. “Where did that name come from?”

Helena smiled. The conservatory relied on volunteers to stay afloat, and Sylvia was most generous to donate her services as part-time bookkeeper to a half-dozen not-for-profits, from the conservatory to the zoo, which meant that she knew as much about dance as she did about orangutans. Helena had danced into her early thirties with the Miami City Ballet before joining the conservatory as an instructor. Her late grandmother was a Russian-trained soloist who had defected to the United States after the most famous male dancer of all time had come toAmerica. Helena was often compared to her grandmother, from her beautiful face and slender neck to her long legs and perfect feet.

“Mikhail Baryshnikov,” said Helena. “Austen is going to be a dancer.”

Sylvia’s husband was at the top of a ten-foot ladder, bolting an aluminum shutter onto a second-floor window. “I didn’t know you were pregnant, Helena. Congratulations.”

Helena laid a hand on her flat stomach, hardened by years of dancing. “I’m not. Owen and I are adopting.”

Sylvia helped her husband climb down and wiped the sweat from his brow. “Owen seems more like the soccer-dad type,” she said. “Does he know his son is going to be a ballet dancer?”

“He’ll know soon enough,” Helena said ruefully.

Just then, as if on cue, Owen’s car pulled into the alley. It screeched to a halt so quickly that the front bumper nearly kissed the pavement, adding a sense of urgency to his unexpected arrival. Owen jumped out from behind the wheel and went to his wife.

“We have to go now, Helena! The baby’s coming!”

Helena froze. “It’s too soon!”

“It’s the storm,” said Owen. “Something to do with the drop in barometric pressure. The hospitals are overflowing with women in their ninth month.”

Helena was suddenly unable to speak or move, overcome with joy and panic.

“Go, girl!” Sylvia told her.

It was all the encouragement she needed. Helena ran to the car. Owen opened the passenger-side door for her, something he never did, but maybe it was his “father to be” instinct kicking in. He hurried around to the driver’s side, and they were off as quickly as Owen had arrived.

“You’re going the wrong way!” said Helena.

They were speeding north on the busy divided highway toward downtown Miami, away from South Miami Hospital. One of the many things Helena and her parents had paid in advance for was a birthing suite at a private hospital.

“Every maternity ward south of Palm Beach is packed,” Owen told her. “South Miami didn’t have a bed, so they sent them to Jackson.”

Jackson Memorial Hospital was the nation’s third-largest public hospital. Patients came from all over for world-class treatment at the University of Miami cancer center, the transplant institute, the National Parkinson’s Foundation, and other renowned programs. As a public hospital, Jackson turned away no one, so it also drew floods of patients from Miami’s poorest neighborhoods, especially in times of public emergency—everything from the deadly Overtown riots in the 1990s to Hurricane Avery today.

“This should be interesting,” Helena said with trepidation. Then she glanced over her shoulder. “Where’s the car seat?”

“It’s at home.”

“Home?What kind of parents show up at the hospital for the birth of their baby without a car seat?”

“Helena, relax. We’re not bringing the baby home today. Probably not even tomorrow, if this storm hits. We can come back with the car seat when he’s ready to come home.”

“I’m not leaving that hospital without our baby,” she said.

She knew she sounded unreasonable, maybe even paranoid. But no one could blame her. She and Owen had been down this road twice before, and twice the adoption had fallen through in the third trimester, one so late that Helena had already embroidered the name on a pillow and decorated the nursery. Pile on three miscarriages and thousands of dollars spent on unsuccessful fertility treatments, and Helena couldn’t handle another disappointment.

Owen reached across the console and held her hand. “Everything is going to be okay.”