The Secret That Broke Us novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: Shift Change

Nate finds June at the dispatch center in front of the whole floor, admits the baby is his, and June gives back her ring. Her contractions start.

I didn't sleep.

At 6:40 I was back at the dispatch center, sitting in the break room at Lena's spare desk, filling out the form that makes a call official.

Lena had made me eat a piece of toast.

I had eaten half.

The day shift was coming in, shaking snow off their jackets and saying good morning to the night crew.

Nobody said anything to me yet.

Everybody on the floor had heard the call.

Calls on the main line go out over the floor speaker for the supervisor's review, and a newborn not breathing always gets played.

They knew the dispatcher's voice.

They did not know whose husband was on the other end of it.

At 7:05 the front door buzzed.

I looked up through the glass and saw Nate in the lobby.

He was still wearing the flannel jacket from the night before.

There was dried blood on the cuff, and it was not his.

The day supervisor opened the inner door for him, because he said he was my husband, and nobody on that floor had ever had a reason to doubt a man who said that.

He walked straight across the room to me.

Twenty people stopped typing.

"June." His eyes were red. "Please. Can we go somewhere and talk?"

"Here is fine," I said.

I didn't stand up.

I was thirty-three weeks along and my back hurt, and I wanted him to look down at me.

He lowered his voice. "It isn't what you think."

"I took the call, Nate."

"I know you did." His voice cracked. "I know. I heard you. You saved her. You saved my..."

He stopped.

I waited.

I wanted to see if he would finish the sentence in front of all those people.

He looked at the floor.

"Say it," I said.

"She's mine," he said, barely out loud. "The baby. Kristin's baby. She's mine."

Somebody's chair rolled back.

Lena stood up from her desk, three feet from me, and put her hand on the back of my chair.

"How long have you known?" I asked.

"June..."

"How long."

"Since March."

That was eight months.

Eight months of me going to ultrasounds alone because he had a deadline.

Eight months of Kristin at my kitchen table, folding tiny sleepers into a basket and saying she was so happy for me.

I took the house key off my ring and set it on the desk between us.

It made a small clicking sound.

"I left the ring on the counter," I said. "Read the whiteboard."

"You can't leave." He said it fast. "June, you don't have anywhere to go. You're due in seven weeks. You've never lived alone a day in your life."

"That's true."

"You'll calm down. You always do. You'll think about the baby and you'll..."

"Which baby, Nate?"

The room was dead silent.

He opened his mouth.

I think that was the first time in six years I had asked him a question he didn't have an answer ready for.

"I need you to leave," I said.

"I'm not leaving without..."

"Sir." The day supervisor had come up behind him. She was a big, calm woman who had once talked a man down off a bridge over the phone. "You need to go. Now."

He looked at me.

I thought he might say something true.

He said, "I did everything for us."

Then my whole belly tightened, low and hard.

I put my hand on the desk.

I breathed through it.

It let go.

Lena had gone very still beside me.

"June," she said. "How long has that been going on?"

"It's nothing. It's the sitting."

I looked at the clock on the wall.

It was 7:19.

The second one came at 7:26, and it was harder.

Nate saw my face change.

"June?" he said. "What is it?"

For the first time all morning, he sounded afraid.

I said, "Lena, call it in."

"Call what in?"

"Call me in," I said. "I'm having contractions."

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