Chapter 6: The Eleven Minutes

Bree did not answer the text.

She looked at the phone in her hand for a long moment.

Then she walked to the kitchen and sat down at the table.

I followed her with my son on my shoulder.

"There's a voicemail," she said. "From 6:44. I never listened to it."

"Play it."

She put it on speaker.

"Bree, baby, I can't talk right now," Corey's voice said.

A woman was crying somewhere behind him.

"Imogen's having a real bad one. Dalton's with her and I said I'd sit with her too. I'll call you back in ten, okay? Love you."

The message ended.

Bree played it again.

Then she put the phone face down on the table.

"Ten minutes," she said.

"Yes."

"He never called back."

"No."

"I had a contraction every four minutes by then. I was standing in a smoke-filled bedroom, and he said ten minutes."

She was not shouting.

Her voice was flat and small, the voice she'd used at twelve when our mother left.

"I'm not telling him," she said. "Not yet. Not until I can look at him without wanting to hit him with a pan."

"Okay."

"That doesn't mean you were right."

"I know."

"It means he doesn't get my daughter for free."

She took the phone upstairs and turned it off.

I stood in the kitchen until the baby started rooting.

Then I went out on the porch to feed him in the dark.

Ansel was already out there, sitting on the top step.

He moved to give me room.

"I need to say something," I said, "and you're not going to like it."

"Go ahead."

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