He Forgave My Affair, But He Never Touched Me Again novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: Who Was That Man

Milo waited until his bath was over to ask.

He sat in the tub with a foam crown on his head and a plastic stegosaurus in each fist.

"Mama. Who was the loud man?"

Keith was on the closed toilet lid with a towel across his knees.

He looked at me, and I knew he would let me answer however I chose.

I sat down on the bath mat.

"He's a man I used to know," I said, "before you were born."

"Is he bad?"

"He did something unkind to me. And he's not kind to people when it's hard for him."

"Why did he say he's my daddy?"

June, behind me on the floor with her boot, stopped talking to it.

I had imagined this question for four years, in a hundred different rooms, and none of them had a stegosaurus.

"Because he helped make you," I said. "A long time ago, before I married Daddy. That's all it means."

Milo turned that over.

"Like a seed?"

"Like a seed."

"Daddy didn't plant the seed?"

Keith laughed, once, and covered his mouth.

"Daddy planted everything else," he said. "Every day. The seed is the smallest part."

"Does the loud man get to take us?"

"No," Keith said, immediately.

"Never?"

"Never. Nobody takes you. You live here."

Milo thought about it for a long moment.

Then he lifted the stegosaurus, shook it, and said, "Okay. Can we do the dinosaur book now?"

We did the dinosaur book.

Keith sat on the edge of the twins' shared bed with Milo tucked under one arm and June under the other, and I sat on the floor with my back against the frame and listened to him do the voices.

At the page about the meteor, June said, drowsily, "Daddy, are you my real daddy?"

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