I Had a Baby without You novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: Pickup

I ran the six blocks to the preschool in my apron.

The teacher was standing on the front step with both hands pressed against her mouth.

"I'm so sorry," she kept saying. "He had the form, he knew her middle name."

"What car?"

"A black one. It turned toward the river."

"Did she cry?"

"No." The teacher swallowed. "She was holding his hand and singing."

I stood there with my heart going.

Poppy sang when she was scared.

She had done it in the hospital, in the grocery line, at the first dentist.

She sang.

Roark's car pulled up before I'd finished the thought.

It was Rhona's rusty hatchback, and he was in the passenger seat with the window down.

I got in the back and told him in four sentences.

He did not say a word.

His face went pale and his hands closed on his knees.

"The hotel," he said.

"Why the hotel?"

"Because it's his. He's never kept a thing he valued anywhere that someone could tell him no."

"It's a hotel with seven hundred rooms."

"Then we start at the bottom."

Rhona drove like she was angry at the road.

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