The Heiress Strikes Back novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: The Report

I did not move for a long time.

Peter lay under my cheek, breathing, with his eyes on the ceiling.

"You remember that," I said.

"I've never forgotten it. I just never knew it was a thing."

"What did your father say?"

"He said, 'This is Dot's niece, from Hartford. Don't tell anyone.' Then he went outside and sat in the car with the engine off until the sun came up."

"And you believed him."

"I was seven. He was my father." His jaw worked. "The next morning I asked Dot why the baby didn't have a mother. She cried and gave me a cookie."

I put my face against his shoulder.

I thought about Aunt Dot's thick red hands, and the cookies, and how she had never once looked me in the eye when I asked where I came from.

She hadn't known.

Somebody had told her to love me, and she had.

"I want to see that blanket," I said.

"I think my father kept it."

"Why would he?"

"He kept everything. He couldn't throw away a nail."

I turned onto my side to look at him.

His glasses were off, and he looked younger, and sad around the mouth.

"You have to understand something," I said. "If this is what it looks like, then your father was part of it."

"I know."

"And your mother."

"I know." He met my eyes. "I'm not asking you to be kind to me about it. I only didn't want to touch you tonight with that still in my mouth."

I looked at him a long moment.

Then I reached up and ran my thumb along the white scar on his hand, and he caught my wrist and kissed my palm.

"You tell me everything you remember," I said. "All of it, tomorrow."

"I will."

"And tonight you're not sorry."

"Tonight I'm a lot of things," Peter said. "Sorry's the smallest."

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