The Secret That Broke Us novel · Chapter 17 of 32

Chapter 17: Nobody's Mother

Nate's mother arrived at my house forty minutes later, carrying a car seat in both arms.

She was sixty-eight and small and wore her church coat.

She walked up my hill.

I had been sitting on the porch with Anders on my lap and a cold cup of tea.

I had known she would come.

I stood up, and I did not go down the steps.

She set the car seat on the top step between us.

The girl lay inside it in a pink hat, awake, with Nate's chin and her fist in her mouth.

"June," Nate's mother said. "I won't stay long."

"Good."

"I have never asked you for anything."

"You told me men stray and women stay," I said. "That's not a request. That's a rule."

Her face tightened.

"I said a foolish thing in a bad hour."

"You said it to a woman who had just found her husband with her best friend."

"I know what I said."

Nate stood at the bottom of the walk with his arms hanging.

Nobody had told him to go.

I hadn't, either.

His mother took one breath and pushed on.

"This child is your son's sister," she said. "She has his blood."

"I know whose child she is."

"Then you know she has no one else."

"Don't."

"She's got no mother. Her mother has left her on a doorstep like a parcel."

"Her mother left her on yours."

"I will do my best by her," she said. "But I am sixty-eight and my knees are bad."

She lifted her chin.

"I have not raised a baby since Nate. You are a woman who knows how."

I looked at the girl.

She had stopped sucking her fist.

Her eyes were dark and unfocused, and they drifted across my face and slid off.

"You want me to take her," I said.

"I want you to be a Christian."

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