He Chose Her So I Left Carrying His Heir novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Eighteen Weeks

At dawn Cameron is at Trudy's door with the folder. Melanie tells him the baby is his, refuses his money, and refuses to be the reason Celia is left. Odette's car is parked at the end of the street.

At ten past six the next morning, someone knocked on Trudy's front door hard enough to shake the glass.

I was already awake, sitting on the edge of my bed in the back room with a cracker in my hand.

Morning sickness had a schedule, and the schedule was cruel.

Trudy was in the kitchen in her flannel robe, stirring oatmeal.

She leaned back to look down the hall.

"There's a man on my porch in a very good coat," she said. "He looks like he hasn't slept since Tuesday."

I knew before I opened the door.

Cameron stood on the stoop with his collar turned up and my clinic folder in both hands.

He had a dark shadow along his jaw.

His left eye twitched the way it did when he'd been awake all night over a deal.

"You left this on a bench," he said.

I said nothing.

"Celia picked it up. She read your name off the front and gave it to me." He swallowed.

"She said, go to her. She said, whatever it is, don't wait."

I took the folder out of his hands.

The scan photo was still tucked inside, my due date in blue pen across the top.

"Is it mine?" he asked.

"You can count."

"Eighteen weeks." His voice cracked on the number. "We ended five weeks ago."

"I found out three weeks ago."

"Three weeks." He looked at my coat, buttoned tight, and then at the cracker crumbs on my sleeve.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"You called to tell me you were marrying a woman who was pregnant," I said. "You were already sorry before I said hello."

"Melanie."

"I wasn't going to hand you two babies and make you pick."

Trudy had come up behind me in the hall.

She didn't say a word, and she was still holding the oatmeal spoon.

Cameron pushed a hand through his hair.

"I'll fix it," he said. "I'll end it with Celia today."

"No."

"Melanie, this is my child."

"And what is hers?" I said. "A baby you said was perfect. I heard the doctor. I watched you thank her."

His face went still.

"You were there."

"I took a wrong turn."

"You saw it."

"I saw all of it."

For a second neither of us spoke.

The oatmeal pot hissed on the stove behind us.

"I am not going to be the reason a pregnant woman gets dumped on a Tuesday," I said. "Not even for you."

"Then let me do something," Cameron said. "Anything. I'll put an apartment in your name. I'll pay the hospital. Whatever you need."

"I need you to take your hand off my door."

He looked down.

He had his palm flat against the frame, and he had been leaning in.

He took it away.

"For eighteen months you never took me anywhere you could be seen," I said. "You never said my name to your family. Now you're on my porch at dawn, offering me an apartment."

"That was to protect you."

"Protect me from what?"

He opened his mouth and nothing came out.

"That's what I thought," I said.

Trudy moved up beside me.

She was a head shorter than Cameron and twice as wide in the shoulders, and she looked up at him with her reading glasses swinging on their cord.

"The lady has answered you, Mr. Draycott," she said. "I read the business pages. I know whose grandson you are."

Cameron looked at her for the first time.

"I'm not here to hurt her."

"Nobody ever is," said Trudy.

He turned back to me.

"I'm coming back," he said. "Tell me not to, and I'll come back anyway."

"Don't."

"I'm sorry. I don't know how else to say it."

"You said it already," I said. "In four minutes, on the phone."

His shoulders dropped.

He went down the steps without looking back, his good shoes skidding on the frosted concrete.

I thought that was the end of it.

I had my hand on the door when I saw what was parked at the end of Dorrance Street.

A black car with its engine running, long and polished and completely out of place beside the rusted pickup trucks and the bins.

Cameron stopped at the curb and spoke to the driver.

Then the back window of the car slid down.

An old woman with white hair pulled into a hard knot looked out over the glass.

She wasn't looking at Cameron.

She was looking at me, and then at my coat, and then at my stomach.

Her lips moved, and I could read them from the porch.

Miss Whitacre.

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