He Let Our Daughter Die for Twenty-Three Dollars novel · Chapter 18 of 24
Chapter 18: Two Hours
The county closed its report on a Monday, and Colter handed my file to another caseworker that same afternoon.
He didn't tell me why.
He didn't touch me for the next six weeks either, except to steady a bottle or pass me a mug.
The district attorney's fraud unit had Carol's tape and a long waiting list.
Sheldon had eaten six Sunday dinners at her table and brought home nothing, because Carol never said one true word in front of him.
Her gray sedan had not been on our street again.
That worried me more than seeing it had.
On a Friday night in the middle of all that waiting, my daughter was eleven weeks old and asleep on her back in a clean crib, with a night aide in the rocking chair beside her.
"Go," the aide said. "I've got her for two hours. Don't come back early."
"I'm only going downstairs."
"Sure you are."
I stood in the hall outside Colter's door in a clean shirt and no shoes.
My doctor had cleared me at the checkup two days before.
I had written the date on my hand and washed it off.
I knocked.
He opened the door in a gray T-shirt, with a book in one hand and his reading glasses pushed up into his hair.
He looked at my bare feet, then at my face.
"Is she all right?"
"She's asleep. Somebody else is watching her."
"Then what's wrong?"
"Nothing's wrong." I stepped into the room. "I'm not in shock. I'm not grateful. I'm not trying to pay you back for anything."
He put the book down on the dresser.
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