The Day Two Sisters Burned for Husbands Who Never Came novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: Paper

The steel door banged open again, and the department came into the bay behind the chief.

The chief had meant what he said about nobody leaving.

Firefighters in dress blues filled the space around Engine 9, shoulder to shoulder, with the women from the hall pressed in behind them.

Dalton walked in last, with no badge on his chest.

Imogen stayed at the back, where I could not see her face.

"What paper?" the chief said. "Sergeant, say it plainly."

"The hospital gave us a page," Corey said. His voice was rough. "It said my daughter was born and died inside the hour. It said both women walked out against advice and left no address."

"Both babies," Dalton said. "Mine too."

"Both."

Nobody in the bay breathed.

Corey looked at Bree, and at the baby under my coat, and back at Bree.

"She's alive," he said. "Isn't she?"

"She's in Lakeshore," Bree said. "In an incubator, with a tube in her nose. She weighs four pounds now, and she cries all night."

Corey made a sound I had never heard a man make.

His knees went, and the lieutenant with the bar on her collar caught him under the arms.

Dalton did not move at all.

"Calla," he said.

I unbuttoned my coat.

My son lay in the carrier against my chest, with a fist beside his mouth and black hair standing up.

Dalton looked at him, and I watched his whole face open.

"His hair," he said. "That's my father's hair."

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