He Traded Our Baby to Save His First Love novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Carl at the Counter

Emmeline's brother storms into the shop believing Geneva refused to save his sister, until he shows her a chart entry saying she consented in March.

I opened Garrard & Daughter at nine on Friday because I didn't know what else to do with my hands.

The shop is a narrow room in Lawrenceville with a green awning and my mother's name still painted on the glass.

I stood at the cooler with a bucket of white ranunculus and did not carry it to the counter.

Every Friday for a year that bucket had gone to the sixth floor of St. Anne's.

This Friday I put the lid on it.

My stomach hurt, and so did my chest, and I kept the stool close and the door unlocked.

The bell rang a little after ten.

A man came in with sawdust on his jacket and his work boots untied.

He was tall enough that he ducked under the hanging ferns without noticing he was doing it.

"Are you Geneva Whitfield?" he said.

"Garrard," I said. "It was Garrard before it was Whitfield."

"Carl Creedon."

I had never met him.

I knew the name from the Christmas cards, the ones Emmeline sent with a photograph of her brother on a ladder in a pine tree and the caption My Hero.

He was the one who cut down trees for a living and drove four hours every weekend to sit with her.

His face was not friendly.

"Nigel told us last night," he said. "He said the baby was lost, and he said it was a terrible accident, and he said you'd already turned my sister down before that."

"Did he."

"He said she asked you for one thing in two years of friendship, and you counted months on your fingers."

I put my hand flat on the counter.

"I'm sorry you're angry," I said. "But I'd like to know what else he said."

"That's all of it. You wouldn't give her a few weeks of discomfort for a chance at being alive."

"A few weeks of discomfort."

"Look, I know you were pregnant. I know that. It's a hard thing. But she's my sister, and she is thirty-four."

"I was ten weeks," I said. "I'm thirty."

It was a stupid thing to say, and he blinked at it.

"Mr. Creedon, did my husband tell you who signed the paper that ended my pregnancy?"

"The doctors," he said. "He said the doctors did what they had to."

"He signed it."

His mouth opened slightly, and closed.

I took the page out of my wallet, behind the picture, and slid it across the counter.

He looked at the paper without picking it up.

"I'm not reading a form out of your hand."

"Then read it out of the counter's."

He did not move.

"Geneva," he said, and it was the first time he said my name like a person and not a verdict. "Whatever's in there, my sister isn't the one who did it. She's in a room with a mask on. She's never raised her voice at you."

"I know. I sent her flowers every week."

"Then why wouldn't you..."

"I'd have given her my marrow in eight months, Mr. Creedon. I told her doctors so. I told my husband so, in my own kitchen, four days before I woke up with nothing inside me."

He took a step back from the counter.

"I don't believe you," he said.

"Okay."

"Nigel wouldn't..."

"Okay."

He picked up his gloves from the counter.

He looked at the paper one more time, still not touching it.

Then he walked out, and the bell rang behind him, and I sat on my stool with my hand over my mouth.

Darby came out of the back room with a tray of cut stems.

"Was that Emmeline's brother?"

"Yes."

"I heard it all. He's a jerk."

"He's scared," I said. "Those aren't different."

"They're really not the same thing, Nor."

I was about to answer when the bell rang again.

Carl was back in the door with his phone in his hand, and he was out of breath.

"Where were you on March third?" he said.

"What?"

"March third. A Saturday. Where were you?"

"Working a wedding in Sewickley. Two hundred guests, forty centerpieces."

"All day?"

"All day. Darby drove the van."

"Seven in the morning till midnight," Darby said. "I have the receipt."

He came to the counter and put the phone down in front of me, screen up.

It was a photograph of a page in a medical chart.

The nurse on six had shown him this morning, he said, because he had asked her what Emmeline's file said about the donor.

A line was highlighted in yellow.

March 3. Donor spouse counseled in person. Consent obtained. Donor available on request.

I read it three times.

I had not been on the sixth floor on March 3, or any other day of that spring.

I had never been counseled.

I had never agreed to anything.

"Somebody typed that," I said.

"Somebody typed that," Carl said, "and it's my sister's chart, and it says you said yes."

He looked at the form on the counter.

Then, very slowly, he finally picked it up.

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