He Dumped Me at Our Rehearsal Dinner, So a Man Twice My Age Took Me Home novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: The Widow on Jones Street

Brendan's POV

Whit did not come back.

I did not go to Gaston Street.

Belle had told me what would happen if I went to that door before I came to hers, and I had decided to believe her.

On Thursday I went to Jones Street instead.

The Bellinger house was a tall gray house behind a wall, with a brass knocker and a magnolia.

I knocked once, and the door opened before I could knock again.

The woman who opened it was seventy-one, small, in a navy cardigan, with white hair held back in a clip.

She looked at my face for a long time, and I saw that she knew it.

"I've been waiting twenty-four years for somebody to ask me," she said. "Come in, Brendan."

She sat me in a back room with the shutters half closed and poured coffee with steady hands.

"Is he alive?" I said.

"He's alive."

I had known it for five days, and hearing it from her mouth sat me down on a hard chair.

"He came early, and he was small, and the doctor said he might not live the night," she said. "He lived the night. I held your son for an hour on the third of March before my husband took him out of the room."

"You held him."

"Lauren was nineteen and out of her mind with fear. My husband told her what to say to you, and she said it on the church steps. I stood behind the church door and let her."

I could not speak.

"I mailed the bracelet to your mother a month later. I couldn't mail it to you, and I didn't have the courage to sign it."

"She thought it was a cruel joke."

"Yes," the old woman said. "I expect she did."

She went to a writing desk and came back with a square Polaroid gone yellow at the edges.

I took it in both hands.

A baby lay in it in a hospital blanket with his eyes shut and his mouth open, shouting at the world.

A dark swirl of hair stood straight up at his crown.

"I've kept that under my stockings for twenty-four years," she said. "Lauren came to me white in the face after a girl on her front steps told her which stone at Bonaventure is the baby's. I thought, that child has more courage than I have ever had."

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