Seven Years Waiting for a Fake Marriage novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: The Lobby

"You can't be here," I said.

Lorna stepped out of the shadow of the doorway.

"I know."

"I signed what you signed. We're finished. You have no reason to stand outside my building."

"I have one." She shifted Sam higher on her shoulder. "The caseworker let me take him. Russ is being held, and there's no other family, so for now I'm his guardian. I flew in this morning. I didn't know where else to go."

"Try a hotel."

"Elliot." Her voice dropped. "Sam is yours."

I laughed.

It came out short and ugly, and a man walking his dog on the sidewalk glanced our way and walked faster.

"That's what you came to say?"

"It's why I rejected the visits. It's why I never let you come."

I put the grocery bag down on the step very carefully, because my hands had started to shake.

"He is Russ's son," I said. "You told me so. In your apartment. You looked at my face and you told me."

"I lied."

She said it plainly, with no tears.

That was what frightened me.

"I came home three months after I left," she said. "The first vacation. Do you remember it?"

I remembered everything about it.

I remembered the airport, her bag set down in our hallway, the nine days of her laughing in our kitchen.

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