While He Built Her Home novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: Whose It Is

I took a folded sheet of paper out of my inside pocket.

It was the lab report from Saturday morning, with my name at the top and one number circled in the nurse's pen.

"I'm pregnant," I said.

The room did not gasp.

It went so quiet I heard the paper birds turn on their strings.

"About five weeks," I said. "I took the test on Friday morning, in the bathroom of the new studio, and I had the blood drawn the next day."

Jared stared at the page in my hand.

"That's not," he said. "Val, the doctors said."

"The doctors never said anything. Brynn said it. She said it for four years, and I believed her because she handed me the bottle."

"But the treatments. Two of them."

"A pill that stops ovulation can't be helped by a fertility procedure," I said. "That's what the clinic told me on Tuesday."

He looked at the bottle in my other hand.

I watched him read the label under the tape.

"Foley," he said. "Brynn Foley."

"Yes."

"It's mine," he said. It was not a question this time.

"You asked me last night whether it was Clayton's. Brynn put that idea in your head, so I'm answering in front of her."

Clayton, beside the crib, did not move.

Jared's face went through three things in a row, and I saw each of them.

First it was joy, so sudden and young that I felt it in my stomach.

Then it was understanding, as the four years caught up with him.

Then it was plain fear.

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