He Auctioned Our Week to My Best Friend, So I Took the Helm novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: The Dock at Dawn

I took my hand out of Finnegan's and walked the rest of the dock alone.

The planks were wet from the night, and my sneakers squeaked on them.

Tobias watched me come with the hospital statement shaking in his fingers.

"Whose is it?" he said again.

"Yours."

He stared at me.

"Seven weeks," I said. "Count back. The twentieth of July, a Saturday, after dinner at your mother's."

"Seven weeks," he said, and said it again, slowly.

"Four years, Tobias."

His face changed.

It crumpled, and then it did something worse and went hopeful, and he took a step toward me.

"Samantha. Sam. A baby?"

"Yes."

"Why didn't you tell me? At the gala, you had it in your purse, didn't you? That's why you were looking at me like that." His voice cracked. "You were going to tell me."

"After the cake."

"Oh my God."

He put a hand over his mouth.

For one moment I saw my husband the way he had been in the clinic waiting room in the first year, when he held my hand and made jokes to keep me from crying.

It hurt more than I expected.

Then behind me, Finnegan's boots sounded on the planks.

Tobias lifted his eyes.

I watched him see the sawdust in my hair and my cardigan buttoned wrong.

Then he saw the man at my shoulder, with his sweater on inside out.

The hope went out of his face by degrees.

"You were with him," he said. "Last night. This morning."

"Yes."

"You told me you weren't."

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