Doctor Boss Is My Baby Daddy novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: The Key

Rhys's POV

She named her at three in the morning, with the baby asleep on her collarbone and the hospital hallway humming outside the door.

I was in the chair beside the bed, awake, because I had not slept since the cord.

"Frances," Valeria said, very softly.

I waited.

"After my father. He called himself Frank, and he called me Val, and he was a weak man who loved me completely." She touched the baby's black hair with one finger. "I want her to have the good part of him. Frankie."

"Frankie," I said.

The baby sighed in her sleep.

By the third morning we were still in the room, with balloons from Jody and a recliner I had bought the wrong size.

A nurse told me twice a day that I was holding my daughter incorrectly.

I was holding Frankie in the crook of one arm when the knock came.

Bridget stood in the doorway in her street clothes, with her hands clasped in front of her.

Behind her, a step back, stood Valeria's stepmother.

She looked older.

She had left the pearls at home, and her coat was buttoned wrong.

"Is this a bad time?" Bridget asked.

"No," Valeria said, from the bed.

I did not move.

I had promised myself in the hallway that I would let her decide this, and I held to it.

The stepmother came in and stopped.

In her hand was a brass key on a plain ring, and a long envelope.

She held both of them out in front of her.

"The deed," she said hoarsely. "Signed. Your mother's lawyer drew it up Monday. The county's been told." She swallowed. "The house is yours. I'll have the last of my things out by the end of the month."

Valeria looked at her for a long time.

"Where will you go?" Valeria asked.

"My sister's, in Kenosha," the stepmother said.

"Is anyone suing you?"

The stepmother took a breath that rattled.

"The rent. The attorney says it was returned money, and that if I repay every dollar there'll be no case." Her eyes went to the baby. "That is all that's left of my savings."

"That's what it cost," Valeria said.

"Yes."

I held the baby a little closer.

"I'm not going to say it's all right," Valeria said. "It isn't. I'm going to say that you may hold her once, for as long as it takes me to count to ten, and then you'll leave."

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