My Husband Hung Up on Me the Night I Gave Birth novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: The Porch

Ryan parked his work car two blocks from Riverside Terrace and put the department phone in my hand.

"It's calling my personal phone," he said. "It stays open in my shirt pocket. You'll hear everything."

"And if I hear something I can't stand?"

"Then you tell me after." He held my eyes. "Please don't walk up there, Erin."

"Go," I said.

He walked off down the sidewalk with his tie loose and his shoulders down, a man coming to a friend's house at one in the morning because he was worried.

I held the phone to my ear and watched his back until the streetlight lost him.

Fabric rustled. A door opened.

"Oh, thank God," Gwen said. "Come in. Come in, you look awful."

"Where were you tonight?" That was Ryan, tired, ordinary.

"Home. Where else? I've been sick over it." Her heels crossed a wooden floor. "Ryan, sit down. I need you to be calm."

"Gwen, what is it?"

Somewhere in the house, a baby cried.

It was a small, cracked, rising cry, and I knew it before my head did.

I had my hand on the car door handle. My knuckles were white.

I did not open it.

"Around midnight, someone knocked," Gwen said. "I looked out, and there was nobody. Only this."

A pause.

"Is that a baby?" Ryan said.

His voice had a hole in the middle of it.

"A basket on my porch, with a blanket and a note. Read it."

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