He Told Me I Lost Our Baby, and Five Years Later I Met Him at His Door novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: The Receptionist

I sat on the curb outside Shanahan's for ten minutes before I could stand.

Nobody came out to me, and I was glad.

Then I walked the four blocks back to the laundromat, climbed the stairs and sat on the unmade bed where he had slept.

My note was gone from the pillow.

He had folded it and left it on the hot plate, with a line written under mine.

I'll be at the bar all day if you want me. I won't come to you. C.

I turned the paper over, and there was nothing else on it.

I thought about the clinic.

It was the one place I could still go, and I knew exactly where it was.

It was on Adams Street, a low yellow building with a sign for a women's health practice.

I had gone there four times in the winter of my last pregnancy, in secret, by bus, on days when Oonagh thought I was at Mass.

The doctor there had been kind.

She had printed the scan for me and slid it across her desk and said, Keep that one safe.

I took the Corolla.

The sign on Adams Street was gone, and the windows were papered over from the inside with brown butcher's paper.

A faded notice hung on the door.

PREMISES CLOSED. FOR LEASE.

I stood on the sidewalk in front of it with my hand on the glass.

"It shut three years ago," a man said behind me.

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