The Clinic Swore the Baby Was His, So He Stayed When It Wasn't novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: Come Up

Mats's POV

She had never called me up on the radio without a smile in her voice.

I thought that on the stairs, with my cap in my hand.

Liisa stood at the window with her back to me when I came through the door.

She did not turn around.

She held her phone out behind her, at the end of a stiff arm.

"Read it," she said.

I took the phone.

The page was white, with a column of dates and one line of bold type.

"Probability of paternity: 0.00%."

I read it twice.

I had spent eleven years not picturing a child, and ten weeks picturing nothing else.

I had expected to feel robbed.

What I felt was the back of her head, held very straight, waiting to be left.

"You can go," Liisa said.

Her voice was flat and even, the voice she used for ore boats.

"I'll tell people it was the clinic's error," she said.

"You said a thing to eight hundred people that wasn't so, and I won't hold you to it."

"You don't owe me a seat at any appointment, Captain."

I put the phone down on her console.

I sat on the operator's stool, because my knees wanted me to.

"Is that what you want?" I asked.

"It's what's fair."

"That isn't what I asked."

She turned around then.

Her gray eyes were dry, and her mouth was white at the corners.

"You told your grandmother before you told me," I said. "I let that go."

"You called me the man whose vial it is, at her table, to her face."

Liisa flinched.

"I've carried that eight weeks," I said. "I thought a man who banks his seed on a form doesn't get to ask."

"I was frightened," she said.

"I know. So was I," I said.

"You just told me I can walk out of here with nothing owed. So I'm asking now."

"What am I to you? Not whose vial."

She opened her mouth.

My phone rang in my coat.

It was the clinic's number, which I had saved eight weeks ago and never once seen light up.

I looked at her.

She nodded, and I put it on speaker and set it on the console between us.

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