The Night I Gave My Best Friend's Brother a Child novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: Yes

Bailey's POV

I was standing in the nursery doorway with my phone still warm in my hand.

I had heard the question from the hall.

Rhett did not look at me at first, and then he did, and I saw how badly he wanted me to say it was all right.

I nodded.

He turned back to the bed.

"Yes," he said. "I'm your dad."

Effie took that in, with her chin pushed into the blanket.

"Okay," she said. "I knew."

"You knew?"

"Gerald told me." She patted the giraffe. "He said you have the same hair on the top. Can I tell him he was right?"

"You can tell him," Rhett said.

His voice cracked in the middle, and he cleared it.

"Is Mama going to be your wife?" Effie asked.

"Go to sleep," I said from the door, and my face was hot.

"That's not a no," Effie told the giraffe, and shut her eyes.

Edith was waiting in the upstairs hall with her arms folded over her robe.

She had been there the whole time.

"Go," she said. "Take the truck. Both of you look worn through."

"Edith, we can't leave her..."

"I have the child, a good lock, and a shotgun I have never fired. Bridget will find all three of them tiresome." She lifted her chin at the stairs. "I will see you at breakfast. Do not hurry."

We did not speak in the truck.

I kept my hand on his knee the whole way, and he kept his eyes on the road, and every mile made it worse.

At the cottage he got the door open with his shoulder and I shut it behind us.

I put his back against the kitchen counter, with the dark window over his head and the river loud outside.

"Effie knew," he said, hoarse. "She just knew."

"She's been asking where her father is since she could talk."

"Bailey..."

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