The wind howled through the broken window, rattling the loose panes like a warning that came too late. The nursery was still — too still. Toys were scattered on the floor, a blanket half-hung from the crib. Rainbow, the baby Libby had adopted only months ago, lay motionless in the center of the room.
Libby stood over the crib, her chest rising and falling in uneven bursts. Her hands trembled. In one, she clutched a small glass bottle — the remnants of a sedative prescribed weeks ago for her insomnia. Her eyes were bloodshot, her face pale. Shadows danced around her from the flickering hallway light, giving her figure an unearthly edge.
She hadn’t meant for this.
When she first brought Rainbow home, she thought she was doing something good. Saving a life. Healing herself. Filling the gaping hole that years of trauma, broken relationships, and isolation had carved into her soul. The baby’s smile was like sunlight — blinding, warm, and full of promise.
But the weight of care, the relentless cry in the night, the paranoia that she wasn’t enough — it crushed her. Slowly. Quietly. Like water seeping into the cracks of a frozen lake. Until one day, it all shattered.
She told herself the dropper had just one dose. Just one to calm the child, just so she could think. Just one to silence the screaming — inside and out. But one dose became two. Then three.
Now the silence was real.
She knelt beside Rainbow, who was no longer breathing. Her tiny chest no longer moved. Libby reached out a trembling hand, brushing the baby’s soft cheek, already cool. A scream formed in her throat but never escaped. Her body folded over itself in the shape of grief.
She didn’t hear the knock. Didn’t hear the door swing open behind her. The neighbor who had heard the crying every night. The officer who entered seconds later. The radio call for an ambulance that wouldn’t arrive in time.
Time stopped in that nursery. It froze at the edge of tragedy, leaving only echoes behind.
Libby was pulled away from the crib, arms behind her back. But her eyes stayed fixed on Rainbow. On the tiny life she had sworn to protect and had, in a moment of confusion and desperation, taken instead.
It wasn’t murder in the traditional sense. There was no malice, no plan. But the result was the same: a life lost, a future erased.
And in that nursery, now filled with officers and hushed voices, the silence lingered.
It would never leave her.
