Chapter 4: The Dates

I read the petition twice with Niamh asleep on my arm.

Then I handed my badge to the lawyer without a word.

He hadn't expected that.

He'd brought a speech for when I fought.

"Tell Cornelia," I said, "that my daughter's name is the only thing in this building she can't sell."

He left with the badge in his folio.

My charge nurse shut the door behind him with her hip.

"I'll find out who signed that suspension," she said.

"Cornelia signed it."

"Then I'll find out who held the pen for her."

They discharged me two days later.

My father drove, because my mother doesn't drive in snow, and Grandda rode in the front with his tank between his knees.

I asked my father to go to Beacon Hill first.

I wanted the bassinet my grandmother's sister had shipped from Cork.

I wanted my own pillow.

I wanted my winter coat, because I'd gone into labor in a fleece.

The brownstone looked the same.

Black door. Brass knocker. Window boxes with nothing in them.

My key went in halfway and stopped.

I tried it again.

My father got out of the car and tried it himself.

"They changed the locks," he said.

There was an envelope taped above the knocker.

My name was typed on it, Dr. Brigid Sheehan.

Inside, a note on Davis's campaign letterhead.

"For everyone's safety and privacy during this transition, please arrange retrieval of personal items through counsel. D."

Under that, a smaller note in Gwyneth's handwriting.

"So sorry it came to this! Your things are fine. xo G"

She'd been inside my house.

She'd touched my things and drawn a heart.

My father read it over my shoulder.

His jaw went hard.

He was a firefighter for thirty-one years and he's put his shoulder through better doors than this one.

"Dad. No."

"I wasn't going to."

Keep reading free with an account. Start He Missed the Delivery Room. I Married His Enemy Instead. from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.