He Held Her Son the Night I Lost Ours novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: Reception

I crouched in front of Ollie on the stairs and held out my palm.

"Can I look at your ring, sweetheart? I'll give it right back."

He studied me, then lifted the string over his head and dropped it in my hand.

The platinum was warm from his skin.

Inside the band, in the tiny script I had picked out myself, it said: G & W, June 9.

Our wedding day.

"He gave it to me because I get scared at night," Ollie said. "He says it keeps the monsters out."

I gave the ring back and closed his fingers over it.

"It's a good ring," I said. "Keep it safe."

Tara watched me with big wet eyes.

"I told Clark it was too much," she whispered. "I told him it should go back to you."

"You told him a lot of things, apparently."

I stepped around her and went inside my flat, and I locked the door.

On Monday morning they came to the studio.

I was on the mezzanine with the library model when the receptionist's voice came up the stairs, bright and uncertain.

"Sir, you can't just go through."

"I'm her husband."

I looked over the rail.

Clark stood in the middle of the entrance in his charcoal suit, holding an enormous bouquet of white roses.

Tara was a step behind him, with Ollie by the hand.

Every head in the long room had turned.

"I'm sorry to make a scene," Clark said to the receptionist, loudly enough for twelve people to hear. "My wife had a loss last week. A miscarriage. She hasn't been herself. She left home without a word, and I've been out of my mind."

A woman near the window put her pen down.

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