Too Late, Don Russo: His Pregnant Wife Signed First novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: Half a Smile

I walked out onto the porch in Bea's old sweater and bare feet.

Valeria's face changed for half a second when she saw me.

Then she smiled with her eyes full of tears.

"Betsy. Oh, honey, you look so tired."

The reporter's recorder swung toward me.

"Tell him what you told me," Valeria said to the reporter, and then to Don. "I didn't want to do this. I drove four hours so you'd hear it from me first."

"Hear what?" Don said.

"Betsy told me, the day I brought the casserole, that she wasn't keeping the baby."

The porch went very quiet.

"She said it was a way to get a bigger settlement. She said a pregnancy would make you pay, and then she'd take care of it. She begged me not to tell you."

The reporter's pen was already moving.

I felt the cold come up through the boards.

I had said no such thing.

I had talked to her in my grandmother's kitchen about ginger tea and nothing else.

And Bea had stood at the stove the whole time, three feet away.

"Her grandmother will say she never said it," Valeria said gently, as if she were sorry for it. "Of course she will. I just couldn't let you walk back into a trap, Don."

Don didn't look at her.

He turned and looked at me.

It was the look he should have given me three years ago, straight and open, with nothing behind it.

"Did you say that?" he asked.

"No."

"Did you ever think it?"

"No."

"Then she's lying."

Valeria's mouth fell open.

"Don, you can't just..."

"I can," he said. "I asked her. She answered."

"You have no proof."

"I don't need any."

I stared at him.

I had spent three years wishing that man would take my word for anything.

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