They Gave My Place to Her, So I Vanished With His Child novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Mister Philip

Ivy sends Caleb away from her street, nurses her daughter through a fever and finds Philip carrying her groceries, saying he wants to bring her home.

"Nobody, baby," I said. "Mr. Langston is mixed up."

Polly frowned at me.

She is four, and she knows when I am lying about small things.

I took my hand out of Caleb's grip and buckled her into the car.

Then I drove to our building with him following in a black rental car the whole way.

I left Polly upstairs with the neighbor in 2B, who gives her crackers and never asks me anything.

When I came back down, Caleb was standing on the sidewalk with his hands in his hoodie pockets.

"Where's your apartment? I'm coming up."

"This is where I live."

He looked at the cracked steps and the dumpster.

"It's a dump, Ivy."

"It's mine."

"Is that kid Douglas's?"

He said it flatly, and I felt my face go still.

"She's my daughter," I said. "Mine."

"She has his chin. Did you think I was blind?"

"What do you want, Caleb?"

His jaw worked.

"Why did you run? You were the spoiled one. You couldn't boil an egg. People said a few ugly things and you vanished for four years?"

I looked at him.

Four years ago I had stood outside his agency until the snow soaked through my shoes.

He had come out at dawn and told me that if I had never been born, Felicity would never have been taken from her real family.

He said calling me his sister made him sick.

"You said it yourself," I told him now. "Apart from blood, we're strangers. So go home."

He stepped back and said nothing for a moment.

"How did you even live?" he asked, quieter. "After the quake. A thousand miles, no money."

An old man had lived in the room across from mine.

I called him Pop-Pop, and so did Polly, before she could say anything else.

He had pulled me out from under a stairwell when the building came down, and then the second floor had come down on him.

I did not say that to Caleb.

"I had help," I said. "It's over now."

"That school mom called you Ms. Moncrief. Did you marry somebody?"

"No. My name is Moncrief."

"Whose name is that?"

"Mine. I picked it."

"Ivy, wait."

I went inside and shut the door in his face.

From the hallway window I watched him stand there a long time with his phone in his hand, not calling anyone.

Upstairs, the neighbor gave me my daughter back with a cracker still in her fist.

That night Polly's forehead was hot against my neck.

By two in the morning the thermometer said 104.

I carried her to the hospital in my coat and sat on a plastic chair while a nurse put in an IV.

It was a viral infection, and they kept her for the night.

I did not sleep.

By dawn her fever had broken, and she was too weak to ask for her stuffed rabbit.

The nurse signed her out at eight.

I walked to the supermarket next door with her asleep on my back, because there was nothing at home to feed her.

At the register I paid, and the plastic bags were lifted out of my hands.

A man's hand, long fingers, a signet ring.

I looked up and saw Philip.

I had not slept, and for one second my mouth said it before my head did.

"Philip."

Then I remembered the last thing he had said to me.

He had said, "You are not my sister. I don't want to see you again."

I stood very straight.

"Mr. Kingsbury."

His face moved.

He looked older, and there were new lines at the corners of his eyes.

"Let me carry these," he said.

"No."

I reached for the bags and swayed.

Polly whimpered on my back.

"Don't," he said. His hand closed on my elbow, steady and careful. "You've been up all night. I'll drive you and the child home."

For most of my life he had been the person who took the heavy things from me.

When I was nine, he carried me down from a tree and told our father I had not climbed it.

When I was twenty, he said, "Whatever you do, I'll handle it."

And then Felicity fell, and he did not handle anything.

He held her and he looked at me.

I stepped back from his hand.

"You're afraid I'll go near Felicity," I said. "I won't. My daughter won't go near Douglas either. I swear it. You can stop worrying."

"Ivy."

"I changed my name so I couldn't use the Kingsbury name for anything. Whatever you came here to check, you can see I'm no threat."

"Ivy."

He had never raised his voice to me, and he did not now.

His eyes were wet.

"I want to bring you home," he said.

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