He Called Our Night a Mistake, So I Raised His Daughter Without Him novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: The Ring on the Table

He came to my kitchen at nine the next Thursday night, after Rosetta was asleep, and he did not knock.

He had a key now.

I had given it to him a month ago, on a key ring with a plastic octopus.

He had held it in his palm and not said a word.

I was at the table with a stack of Rosetta's school papers.

He stood in the doorway in his canvas jacket with his hands in his pockets.

"Your father came to see me," he said.

"I know."

"He told you?"

"He told my mother, and my mother told me before he'd gotten his coat off." I put down my pen. "She said he's been in a good mood all week. It's disturbing."

Sullivan almost smiled.

He crossed the room and set a flat brown envelope on the table, soft at the corners, with yellow tape.

I knew the handwriting before I saw it.

Nico, she got her first tooth today. I don't know who else to tell. She has gray eyes. C.

I looked at it for a long time.

"I wrote that," I said, "at my kitchen table in Knoxville. I'd been awake thirty hours."

"Nico kept it."

"I know. I sent it, and he said it was the best thing he'd ever gotten in the mail."

"I think that was true."

"I think it was." I touched the envelope. "That's what makes it so hard to hate him."

"You don't have to."

"Tell me what he said."

"Your father?"

"Everything."

He told me.

He told me about the counter and the five a.m. mornings, and the cannoli, and the thing about the phone face down.

I laughed, once, and then I covered my mouth.

"He said I'm his son too," Sullivan said.

"You are."

"He said I couldn't ask you in a restaurant."

My eyebrows went up.

"Ask me what?"

He took his right hand out of his pocket and set a small black box next to the envelope.

He didn't open it.

I stared at it.

"I'm not asking you to marry me," he said quickly.

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