Water Broke at Midnight, Husband Waited for Her BFF's Hair, Baby's New Daddy Didn't novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: What He Did

Kira's POV

My boss had come in on a Saturday just to see me.

He had a folded printout on his desk, and an email on his screen from an address I did not know.

"I haven't opened the attachment," he said. "I won't. You are a very good hygienist, Kira, and what is in your own file is yours."

I cried a little in his office.

Then I washed my face in the staff bathroom and went out through the front lobby with my chin up.

Lacey was sitting on the bench outside the doors in the cold, in a long camel coat, with her hands in her lap.

She stood up when she saw me.

"Don't scream," she said. "I'm only here to tell you the truth."

"Your truth ends up on the internet."

"Greg's truth doesn't." She stepped closer. "He told you he stood at his own door. Didn't he? He told you that part. I bet he said it very quietly."

My stomach turned over.

"Go away, Lacey."

"He didn't tell you what happened after."

"I said go."

"Rhonda's baby was a girl," Lacey said. "She was born at 3:50 in the morning, in the ambulance bay of the same hospital you went to. She lived nine minutes."

I stopped moving.

"Rhonda had a placental abruption," Lacey went on. "The doctors said every minute counted. You know how many minutes my brother let her stand in our front hall? Ten. I asked for ten, and he gave them to me."

"You asked for them."

"I asked," she said. "He gave."

Her voice had gone gentle, and wet, and certain.

"I'm not the one who wasn't there, Mar. He was standing right beside her. He's the one who waited. He moved in under you six weeks ago to make himself feel better, and you thought he was a hero."

The doors swished open behind me.

I heard a truck door slam in the lot, and boots on the pavement, quick.

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