He Came Back for Both of Us novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: Recovery Room

Benji wakes up and charms the father he's never met; Felicity tells Jameson he gave up any claim when he signed that paper, and he answers by handing her the envelope of proof he's kept for four years.

I stood up so we were closer to eye level.

It didn't help. He'd always been a head taller.

"I told you," I said. "On a Monday night in our kitchen. You were eating cereal."

His jaw went tight.

"You told me you were pregnant. And three days later," he said, and stopped.

The man with the coffee had his phone up.

Lisette stepped between us with her brightest smile.

"Dr. Legare. Lisette Grimball. We met at your mother's Christmas party, years ago."

He looked at her for a moment.

"I know who you are."

"Then you know I'm Felicity's manager. Anything about Crumb goes through me."

"His name is Benji," Jameson said.

He handed the pink phone back to a nurse hovering by the desk, who took it and fled.

A woman in purple scrubs came through the doors.

"Mom of Benji Dunagan? He's awake and he's asking for you. And for, um." She glanced at Jameson. "For the clone."

Lisette's phone came up so fast I heard her rings click against it.

I put my hand flat over the lens.

"Stay here," I told her.

Then I walked through the doors, and Jameson walked behind me, and I didn't tell him not to.

Benji looked tiny in the bed.

He had a tube in his hand taped to a board, and a hospital gown with cartoon whales on it.

But his cheeks had color again.

"Mommy." His voice was a scrape. "They put me to sleep with a mask that smelled like bubblegum."

"I know, baby." I kissed his hair. It smelled like iodine. "How do you feel?"

"Sore." He considered. "And actually, kind of hungry."

Then his eyes slid past me.

Jameson had stopped at the foot of the bed.

He stood the way he used to stand at the edge of a party, hands behind his back.

"Hi," Benji said.

"Hi," Jameson said.

"Are you the one who fixed my tummy?"

"No. My teacher fixed it. He's very good."

"Better than you?"

"Much better."

Benji thought about that.

"Actually, my appendix was huge," he said. "The doctor told me. He said it was the size of a banana."

"He told you that?"

"A little banana." Benji held up two fingers, then frowned at the tube in his hand. "Do you have dinosaurs at this hospital?"

Jameson looked at me.

I'd never seen him not know an answer.

"There's a stegosaurus on the wall in the playroom," he said. "Third floor. It's missing a plate on its back."

Benji's eyes went huge.

"Which plate?"

"The fourth one from the head. Somebody pried it off before I worked here."

"That's a crime," Benji said, very seriously.

"I've always thought so."

The corner of Jameson's mouth moved.

It was the smallest thing. A twitch.

I'd been married to him for fourteen months, and I could count on one hand the times I'd seen that twitch.

Benji yawned so wide his whole face disappeared.

"Are you staying?" he mumbled.

Nobody answered him.

He was asleep before it mattered.

I walked out into the hall.

I heard the door click behind me.

The hallway was empty except for a cleaning cart and a window full of pink sky.

I turned around.

"Here's how this is going to work," I said.

He waited.

"You don't have a claim. You don't get visits. You don't get to be the clone."

"Felicity."

"You stood on those steps and said he wasn't yours. You signed a paper that said it."

"You had your lawyer write it in three different places."

"I know what I signed."

"Then you know you're done."

He was quiet for a while.

Down the hall a monitor beeped, steady and slow.

"I read every page of your account this morning," he said. "In the locker room. I read the comments."

"Good for you."

"He was born on December twenty-second. At four in the morning. You posted a picture of his hand around your finger."

My throat closed.

"You don't get to quote it to me."

"I'm not quoting it."

He looked down at the floor.

"I'm telling you I did the math, and the math is right, and I'm going to have to live with that."

"You should have done the math four years ago."

"I had proof."

I laughed at him.

I didn't mean to. It just came out, short and ugly.

"Proof."

"Yes."

"Of what? That I married you for money? I left with two suitcases."

"Of what you were doing at one in the morning, the night before you told me."

His voice didn't rise. It never rose.

It just went colder.

"I don't know what you think you saw," I said.

"I don't think. I've kept it."

He reached into the inside pocket of his coat.

He'd changed coats, I remembered. He'd gone somewhere before he came out to the waiting room.

He'd gone to get this.

He held out an envelope.

It was a plain white one, soft at the corners from being handled. Somebody had opened and closed it many, many times.

Inside, I could see the edge of a glossy print.

A narrow hallway. A red exit sign.

Me, at one in the morning, laughing, with a man's arm around my shoulders.

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