Chapter 5: Marsh Street

They discharged us on Saturday morning.

Posy rode home in the car seat Norm had installed himself, with the straps checked three times.

I sat in the back beside her with a pillow pressed to my stomach.

Every bump in the road went through my stitches.

I didn't care.

I kept my eyes on her face the whole way down Marsh Street.

"Corrine," my father said.

I looked up.

A white van was backed into our driveway with BOZEMAN MOTORS in blue letters on its side.

The front door of our house stood wide open.

Two men in work gloves were carrying our nursery crib down the porch steps.

It was the white crib Norm had put together on his knees in August, with the little stars cut into the headboard.

Brent stood on the lawn with his hands in his pockets, giving directions.

"Watch the corner," he said. "Don't scratch it. It's going to my place on Pine."

"Your place," I said, out loud, to nobody.

Norm turned off the engine.

Across the street, the old woman from number nineteen stood on her porch with a mug.

The couple at number twenty-four had come out to their mailbox and forgotten to open it.

Somebody's teenager had a phone up.

I unbuckled Posy's seat from its base and lifted it out.

It was heavy, and my stitches pulled so hard I saw white.

"Corrine, let me," Norm said.

"I've got her."

I carried my daughter up the driveway and stopped in front of the porch steps.

The two men with the crib stopped too.

"Ma'am," one of them said, and looked at the other.

"Put it down," I said.

"We were told to bring it to..."

"I'm sure you were."

I set the car seat on the bottom step, and I stood behind it with both hands on the handle.

Keep reading free with an account. Start My Husband Left Me in Labor for My Best Friend and Her Baby from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.