A Secret in Her Father's House, A Pregnancy Neither Can Hide novel · Chapter 6 of 24
Chapter 6: Against the Door
Henrik drove up to the Astoria Column at six in the morning to tell himself the truth.
He parked in the empty gravel lot and stood at the stone wall with his coffee going cold.
Below him the whole town lay in grey light, with the river wide and flat and the bridge a long thin line into Washington.
He was fifty-four years old.
He had a daughter asleep in his house, and her mouth was still on his skin.
He said it out loud to the wind.
"You are not a good man."
Nobody argued.
He had known what he was doing from the first minute.
When Alana called from Portland in August, he had heard her voice go small on the word apartment and he had said, "Come home."
He had known what he meant by it, and he had told himself that he did not.
He had lasted until the second night.
He had stood outside her door for twenty minutes, and he had offered her the motel and the road and every honest exit he could build.
She had sat up in the bed and said nothing.
He had needed her to say it.
He had needed to hear her say it, because without that he could not have borne himself.
He had not forgotten that.
He stood at the wall and went through what he owed her.
He owed her a father who stayed in his room.
He owed her mother a call, and a lie told in a calm voice, and he had already told it.
He owed Sigrid nothing, and Sigrid knew anyway.
The only thing in his whole life that he had been sorry about, until this summer, was a weekend nearly eighteen years old.
Janice had packed a nine-year-old girl's room into boxes in two days and driven her to Portland, and he had stood in the driveway with his hands in his pockets and let it happen.
He had not asked Alana to stay.
He still did not know why. He thought it was because he had believed a man should not ask.
He had been right about a lot of things and wrong about that one.
He would have to say that to her someday, and not now.
The sun came over the hills.
He threw out the coffee, got back in the truck and decided.
He would end it today.
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