I Left Pregnant and Swore She Wasn't His, Now He Wants the Truth novel · Chapter 8 of 32

Chapter 8: The Cafe on Bridge Street

Delphine came up the porch steps in heeled boots.

"I heard Miss Noemie fell," she said, and held up a covered dish. "I brought a gumbo."

"She's in the hospital," I said.

"Then it's for you."

She looked past me at the kitchen table, where Lou was lining bottle caps up by color.

Her face did something brief and delicate.

"And this is the little one."

"This is Lou."

"How old, honey?" Delphine asked.

"Five," Lou said, not looking up. "And eleven days."

"Five," Delphine said.

She said it flatly, and let it sit.

"October, I'd guess."

I said nothing.

"Isn't that something," she said, and turned the smile on Gabe, who had stopped halfway down the back step with his toolbox in his hand.

"Armand wants you at the mill by ten, sugar. The pump on the south dryer."

"I'll be there."

"He also wants to see her," Delphine said.

"No."

"Gabriel."

"No one is seeing her," he said. "Not today. Tell him that."

She tilted her head.

"He's been so worried about you, you know. You and I have had supper at his table every Sunday for four years. He thinks it's time you stopped carrying this house on your back."

"Delphine."

"I'm only saying we've all worried," Delphine said.

He walked down to his truck without another word.

I watched him go, and I saw his shoulders and the dark edge of his collar.

I hated that I knew exactly how he looked when he was holding his temper.

Delphine set the gumbo on the rail.

"I'm so glad you're well," she said, very softly, to me. "I always thought you were."

Then she got in her white car and drove away.

The gumbo smelled wonderful, and I put it in the trash.

At noon I took Lou to the cafe on Bridge Street because she had been promised beignets and because I had run out of ways to stay in a house that smelled of him.

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