Don't Give Me Tainted Love novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Brother at the Bedside

Bradley arrives with a toy. Melanie goes white and orders him out. The lab result comes back: zero percent.

Melanie went down for coffee at eight in the morning.

She kissed Eric's forehead first, then looked at me for a second too long.

"Don't leave him."

"I won't."

The door closed behind her, and I sat down on the edge of Eric's bed.

He was awake and pale and quiet, and he had not said a word about the gate since midnight.

I did not ask.

I had decided to let him tell me when he was ready.

At twenty past eight someone knocked twice on the door and opened it without waiting.

"There's my guy."

My brother came in carrying a big flat box with a bow on it.

Bradley was thirty-one and looked younger.

He wore a camel jacket that cost more than my truck payment, and he smiled with his whole face, as he always had.

I had even forgiven him for Roxanne.

"Hey, big man," Bradley said to the bed.

Eric pulled the blanket up to his chin.

Bradley laughed and set the box on the bed rail.

"It's the big Lego fire station. Your mom told me you wanted it."

"She didn't tell you," Eric said, very small.

"She did."

"She doesn't talk to you."

Bradley's smile did not move, and something behind it went still.

I stood up and walked around the bed.

"Bradley. What are you doing here?"

"Visiting my nephew. Is that a crime?" He held out a hand for me to shake, and I did not take it. "Come on, Dal. It's a hospital. Everybody's here for the same reason."

"What did you say to Eric at the school gate yesterday?"

For a second he looked honestly surprised.

"I waved. He's family. I wave."

"He ran into traffic."

"Then I'm sorry. I didn't know he was on a bike."

He said it smoothly, and he looked at me while he said it, and I saw his chin.

It had a small cleft in the middle.

I had seen that chin across the dinner table for twenty-two years.

I looked at the bed, and my son looked back at me over the edge of the blanket with that same cleft in his face.

My mind refused to put the two together.

It said: he's your brother, he's family, half the world has a chin like that.

The door opened again.

Melanie stood in it with two coffees.

She saw Bradley, and the cups slid out of her hands.

They hit the floor and burst.

Hot coffee ran across the tile and over her shoes, and she did not look down.

Her face had gone the color of the wall.

"Get out."

"Melanie," Bradley said gently. "I brought the boy a present."

"Get out of this room."

"Wow. You haven't said a word to me in months and that's the first thing I get?"

"I'm calling security."

"Please do."

He turned to me with his hands open.

"Dal, she's been like this since the wedding. Ask her what I ever did."

"What did you do?" I said to him.

He looked at Melanie.

Melanie looked at the floor.

I felt something cold go through me and settle in my stomach.

She wouldn't look at him, and she wouldn't look at me.

I had seen this once before, nine years ago, in the doorway of Roxanne's apartment.

Roxanne had not been able to look at Bradley in front of me either.

"I think you'd better go," I said.

"Of course." Bradley set the box on the chair. "I'll leave this for him."

He stopped beside me on the way out and spoke low, so only I could hear.

"Congratulations on the fatherhood, brother."

He left.

The door swung shut behind him.

Melanie crossed the room and gathered Eric into her arms.

"He's gone, baby. He's gone. You're okay."

Eric clung to her neck, shaking.

"Mommy, don't let him come back."

"I won't. I promise."

I stood in the puddle of coffee and watched my wife hold my son and shake.

Fear like that cannot be faked.

But it had a man's name under it.

And I did not yet know whether it belonged to a woman who had been frightened by Bradley, or to a woman who had been caught.

A nurse came with a mop.

Melanie would not look at me when I told her I was stepping out for air.

I walked down to the lobby and stood by the glass doors in the morning light.

My phone rang at ten minutes to noon.

It was the lab.

"Mr. Ames? We've compared both samples. I'm sorry to give you this by phone. The probability that you are Eric's biological father is zero percent."

I had known it since yesterday.

I had seen it on a doctor's tablet, and I had heard it in an office door.

But a number on a phone is a different thing.

I thanked her and hung up.

I stood there, a man with no son, in a hospital lobby with a revolving door.

Upstairs, a seven-year-old boy was asking for me.

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