I Left Pregnant and Swore She Wasn't His, Now He Wants the Truth novel · Chapter 15 of 32

Chapter 15: The Clipboard

Gabe called her back from the porch in his bare feet.

I stood at the screen door with a blanket around my shoulders and heard his half of it.

"What is it, Delphine?" he said. "No. Say it plain."

He listened for a while.

His shoulders went rigid under the T-shirt he'd pulled on.

"When?" he said. "Who told you?"

She said something long, in her soft voice, which came through the phone as a murmur.

"I'm at Odette's," Gabe said. "Yes. I'm aware how that sounds."

He hung up.

He turned around and looked at me through the screen.

"Somebody called the state," he said. "About Lou. Delphine says she heard it from a friend at the courthouse, and she wanted me to know in time to be at the house."

"A friend."

"That's what she said."

"Gabe, she's the one who called," I said.

"I know."

"How do you know?"

"Because she's never in her life warned me about anything for free," Gabe said.

He didn't sound angry.

He sounded certain.

I went back to the kitchen and put on a pot of coffee, and I cleaned the table.

I scrubbed it down with a wet rag, with my face hot, and I did not look at the edge where I'd sat.

At ten I walked across the road to collect my daughter.

She came out the neighbor's front door with the alligator under her arm and a ring of marker around her mouth.

"We were pirates," she said.

"I can see that."

"I was the captain."

"Of course you were," I said.

A gray sedan pulled up behind my car as we crossed the yard.

A woman got out of it holding a clipboard.

She was in her fifties, with sensible shoes and tired eyes, and she looked at me and then at Gabe on the porch.

"Ms. Thibodeaux?" she said. "I'm with the Department of Children and Family Services. We received a report about the welfare of a child at this address. I'd like to come in, if that's all right."

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