I Left Pregnant and Swore She Wasn't His, Now He Wants the Truth novel · Chapter 9 of 32

Chapter 9: Ninety-Nine Point Nine

The result came on Thursday night, by email, and he didn't open it.

He drove to Breaux Bridge with his phone in his shirt pocket and knocked on the back door at nine, after Lou was asleep.

He had said at a table with the door shut, and he'd waited three days for me to say yes to the table.

I opened the door.

We sat across from each other at my grandmother's kitchen table, under the rooster clock, with a single lamp on.

He had shaved.

His hands lay flat on the wood, either side of the phone.

"I haven't looked at it," he said.

"Why not?"

"I wanted you there."

I hadn't expected that.

He turned the phone toward me and tapped the screen.

I read it without wanting to.

Alleged father: Gabriel Armand Guidry.

Child: Eloise Marie Thibodeaux.

Probability of paternity: 99.9999 percent.

I had known it for five years.

It was still a different thing to see it in black on a screen.

He read it too, slowly, from where he sat.

He put his hand over his mouth.

For a while the only sound in the kitchen was the rooster clock.

"She's mine," he said.

"Yes."

"You knew."

"Yes," I said.

"When you stood in the yard."

"Yes, Gabe. I knew."

He took his hand away.

I thought he would shout.

I had been ready for shouting, I had practiced answers.

He said quietly, "Five years."

"I know how long it was."

"Do you? Because I spent it driving past a house with the porch light out. I sat in the carport every October fourth and I didn't know why." He drew a breath. "She's in a school. She has a tooth gap. She can count to two hundred and eleven in bottle caps. I'm learning that from a five-year-old on a step."

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