They Gave My Place to Her, So I Vanished With His Child novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Terms

Philip drives them home and notices Polly's white streak; Douglas is waiting at her door.

I did not get in his car because I trusted him.

I got in because Polly was heavy and my legs were shaking.

Philip settled her against my shoulder in the back seat and drove the way he always had, both hands on the wheel.

"Where to?"

"Fourth Street. The brick building with the green door."

He turned without a word.

He had known the name of the street before I said it.

"You asked Caleb," I said.

"Caleb called me last night. He wouldn't say where you were. I had a man look at the school list this morning."

"You had me followed."

"I had a name checked." His eyes met mine in the mirror. "I buried you, Ivy."

"Caleb said."

"They found your bag under a collapsed building. The coroner couldn't identify anyone from that floor. I stood in the cemetery in the rain and put your name on a stone."

"You told me not to come back," I said. "I did what you said."

He did not argue.

At the light he looked at his hands.

"I was wrong."

"You didn't say that four years ago."

"I know."

"You said it in front of Douglas, and the staff, and Felicity on the stairs, and you said it with her in your arms."

"I know what I said."

I waited for him to say Felicity had lied, or Felicity had been confused, or that he had a reason.

He said none of it.

Polly stirred, and her head turned on my arm.

The light through the window lit the side of her face, and her hair fell back from her forehead.

The white streak showed, a clear inch at her left temple.

Philip looked in the mirror and went still.

The light turned green and a car honked behind us.

He drove on.

"She has it too," he said.

"It runs in the family," I said. "Mine and hers. I have no idea whose."

"You combed yours down over your eyes when you were seven," he said, almost to himself. "I told you it was fine."

His voice had gone rough.

I let it go.

"Here's what I'll tell you," I said. "I'm not coming home. I won't take a penny. If Felicity wants to know whether I'm after anything, tell her no."

"Felicity isn't why I came."

"Then why?"

"Because it has been four years and nothing in my house has been right."

I looked out at the road.

"And Douglas is not married," he said.

My stomach turned over.

"They got engaged that night," I said. "I watched them."

"They never set a date. He says not yet, every time. Felicity stopped asking last winter."

"I don't care what Douglas does."

"I know."

"I don't."

"I know, Ivy."

He parked at the curb in front of my building and turned off the engine.

I should have thanked him and gotten out.

Instead I sat with my hand on Polly's back and said the thing I had been afraid to say all morning.

"Who else knows I'm here?"

He did not answer right away.

"Philip."

"I told Douglas," he said. "At seven. I thought he'd want to know you were alive."

I stared at him.

"I told you my daughter would never go near him."

"He's not a bad man. He cried on the phone."

I opened the door so hard it banged the pole beside the curb.

I hauled Polly and the grocery bags onto the sidewalk and Philip came around the car to help.

I did not let him.

At the green door a man was sitting on the top step, in a good wool coat, with his elbows on his knees.

He had not shaved.

He stood up when he saw me, and the color left his face.

It was Douglas.

He did not look at me.

He looked at the girl on my shoulder, at her chin and the dark hair and the white streak at her temple.

"Ivy," he said, and his voice broke in the middle of my name. "How old is she?"

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