He Said Children Were a Mistake, So I Ran With His Baby novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Client Files

In Scranton her grandmother hears the heartbeat with her. Then the trade site says Elena stole client files for a rival.

My grandmother met me at the door of her house in Scranton with flour to her elbows.

She took one look at my face and my single bag and said, "Who do I have to kill?"

"Nonna, nobody. I quit."

"You quit." She wiped her hands on her apron. "In nine years you have never quit anything."

"I'm pregnant."

She went completely still.

Then she took my face in both floury hands and kissed me hard on the forehead.

"Whose is it?"

"His."

"The cold one," she said. "The one who never comes to the phone when I send a panettone."

"He doesn't know."

"Does he deserve to?"

"He told his whole board that children are a mistake."

Nonna said a word in Italian that I will not translate.

Then she said, "Sit. Eat. You're feeding two now, and neither of you is going to do it on crackers."

The house smelled of bread and coffee and the green soap she'd used my whole life.

Downstairs was the deli counter my grandfather had built the year they married.

Upstairs was my old bedroom, with the same quilt.

I slept eleven hours.

On Thursday she took me to a doctor on Wyoming Avenue, a brisk woman who did not care who anyone's boss was.

She put the gel on my stomach and turned the screen toward us.

At first it was only gray static.

Then there was a small, fast flicker, so quick I thought the machine was glitching.

"That's the heartbeat," the doctor said. "One hundred and sixty. That's exactly right."

I put my hand over my mouth.

Nonna gripped my other hand so hard it hurt.

"Eight weeks, a few days," the doctor said. "Due in the middle of May."

She printed the picture and handed it to me.

I looked at that little curved shape.

For the first time since the bathroom floor, I wasn't scared.

I was furious.

I was furious that a man could walk past this and call it a mistake without ever having looked.

In the car I took out my phone.

Maxim had called nine times.

Eleven texts.

The last one, from four minutes ago, said: Tell me where you are.

I read it twice.

He had not once written, Are you all right?

I blocked his number and put the phone in my bag.

"Good girl," Nonna said, and pulled out onto the road.

Over the next week I found out how many things in a house a person can fix when she has to keep her hands busy.

I re-hung the cabinet doors.

I rebuilt her ordering spreadsheet.

I stood behind the deli counter at lunchtime, slicing mortadella, and for twenty minutes I didn't think about him once.

At four o'clock the regulars came in.

A man from the funeral home wanted his usual provolone.

Two sisters from the church wanted to feel my belly, although there was nothing to feel yet.

Nobody here knew what a quarterly board meeting was.

Nobody here had ever heard my name said like an order.

On Friday morning Nonna came down at six with her reading glasses on her nose and her tablet in her hand.

She does not read trade news.

She was standing very still at the end of the counter.

"Elena," she said. "Come here and read this."

I came around the counter and took the tablet.

It was a business site I had read every morning for years, usually to see what was being said about Maxim.

The headline sat across the top in thick black letters.

KOVALEV'S COO VANISHES: SOURCES SAY SHE TOOK CLIENT FILES TO A RIVAL.

Under it was a photograph of me from the lobby, my face turned half away, my bag on my shoulder.

I read the first paragraph.

Then I read the second.

Anonymous sources close to the company said I had been quietly negotiating with a competitor for months.

They said I had copied the entire client list on my last night.

They said Maxim Kovalev was "devastated by the betrayal."

At the bottom was a quote from a board member who asked not to be named.

"Elena always seemed so loyal. It's heartbreaking when someone you trust turns out to be a thief."

I had worked nine years for that company.

I had never taken so much as a pen home.

My grandmother set the rolling pin down on the counter.

"Who is it?" she said.

"I don't know yet," I said.

But only one person on that board had known I was going to Scranton.

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