He Made Her His Old Lady. I Took His Baby and Vanished novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: The Clinic

Truus drives Femke to a clinic in another county where she hears the heartbeat, decides to keep it a secret, and calls the one number her Oma left her.

Truus knocked on my door at seven on Monday morning with her car keys already in her hand.

"Get your coat," she said. "We're going to a clinic two counties over, where nobody knows either of us."

I stood in the doorway in my socks.

"I never told you I needed a clinic."

"Honey, you threw up in the club's kitchen sink twice last week and ate dry crackers at the leadership table. I raised three kids."

I got my coat.

We drove an hour in her old Buick with the heater rattling.

Truus did not ask me anything for the first forty minutes.

"Is it his?" she asked then.

"Yes."

"Does he know?"

"No."

She nodded at the road.

"Good," she said. "Keep it that way."

I turned in the seat.

"Truus. You work for Pieter."

"I work for the club's books," she said. "Friday afternoon, Pieter handed me a bill for two hundred dollars from an engraver and told me to pay it out of his account and not mention it to you."

My stomach turned over.

"He had a plate cut for Sanne three weeks ago," I said.

"He did."

"And Joost told me August."

"Joost can tell you any month he wants." Truus's hands were tight on the wheel. "I'm telling you what's in my ledger."

I looked out at the gray cornfields.

Three weeks.

Father and son had planned my replacement together while I ordered coats.

That was what the ledger said to me, and I believed it.

The clinic was a low brick building behind a feed store.

A young woman at the desk slid a clipboard through the window.

I filled it in with a hand that did not feel like mine, and when she asked for insurance, I pulled out my club card without thinking.

Truus closed her eyes.

"What?" I said.

"Nothing," she said, too quickly. "It's done now."

In the exam room, a tech with cold hands put gel on my stomach and a screen on the wall flickered.

Then I heard it.

A fast, wet, steady beat, faster than any heart I had ever listened to.

"Nine weeks and one day," the tech said, smiling. "Heartbeat's a hundred and sixty. That's right where we want it."

I put both hands over my mouth.

I had been so angry for two days that I had not once thought of this as a person.

Truus took my hand without a word.

"Is Dad coming for the next visit?" the tech asked, still smiling. "A lot of them like to hear it."

"No," I said.

The smile went careful.

"Then it's you and the little one," she said. "That's plenty."

She printed the picture and handed it to me, and I folded it in half and put it inside my bra where nobody would ever look.

When the tech left, I sat up and wiped my stomach with the paper towel.

"I'm keeping it," I said.

"I never thought you wouldn't."

"I mean I'm keeping it from all of them. Joost, Pieter, the club, the old ladies. Nobody gets to know this child exists."

Truus studied me.

"He'd come after you, if he knew. Not Joost, maybe. But the club takes what's the club's."

"Then it won't be the club's."

I said it out loud, in a room with a poster of a baby's skeleton on the wall.

"I want to disappear, Truus. Where nobody from the club can see me. I need you to help me do it."

She let out a slow breath.

"I can drive your car somewhere it'll be found," she said. "I can tell Pieter you left at dawn heading south. That's all I can do without losing my seat."

"That's enough."

"Do you have somewhere to go?"

I thought of the shoebox on the top shelf of my closet.

My Oma had died in April, and she had left me almost nothing but a lighter, a rosary, a recipe card and an address book older than I was.

I had read it twice and never thought of using it.

That night I sat on the kitchen floor of the house on Ottawa with the box open between my knees.

Joost's boots were still by the door.

He had not come once.

The address book was soft at the edges and written in Oma's cramped hand.

Under R, in blue ink, one entry had been circled twice.

Greet Rademaker. Pentwater. Lake road.

There was a phone number beside it, with a note: If ever.

I dialed from the landline because I did not trust my cell.

It rang six times.

Then an old rough voice answered, "Rademaker's Bait and Tackle, we're closed."

"Mrs. Rademaker," I said. "My name is Femke Brandsma. I'm Oma's granddaughter."

The line went still.

Somewhere behind her a screen door banged in the wind.

"Your Oma left a room for you," Greet said. "She paid me for it in March. Come when you can, and come with nobody."

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