Excluded and Uninvited novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: Cut Off at the Top

Brandy got out of the SUV and walked up to Jo's front door with an envelope.

I watched her from the window, with Katja on one side of me and Jo on the other.

She did not ring the bell.

She slid the envelope under the door, looked straight up at our window and went back to her car.

"She wants you to come down," Katja said.

"I know."

"You don't have to."

"If I stay up here she posts the door," I said. "If I go down she posts the door anyway. I'd rather hear what she says."

Jo was already on her knees by the mat, picking up the envelope with two fingers.

It held one sheet of paper, a photocopy.

Someone had cut the top off before copying it, so the clinic's name and address were gone.

What was left said: "Intrauterine pregnancy confirmed. Gestation 11 weeks 2 days." There was a date stamp in the corner.

Jo read it twice.

Then she took out her phone and counted on the calendar, tapping each week with her thumb.

"This is dated three weeks before the alley," she said.

"So?"

"So on Wednesday she sat in that diner and told you nine weeks."

Nobody said anything.

"Eleven weeks, three weeks before the alley, plus the days since," Jo said. "She's not nine weeks. She's about fifteen."

I did the arithmetic myself, because I did not trust it coming from someone else.

Fifteen weeks back was a month when I'd worked twenty-four-hour shifts and slept at the station twice a week.

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