Chapter 9: The Crib

At two in the morning somebody knocked on the back door of Sobczak's Tap, three soft knocks and then a pause.

I was on Pete's couch upstairs, wide awake, because my back hurt and the baby liked the night.

I heard Pete go down the steps and open the door.

"No," Pete said.

"I just need to..."

"No."

"Pete, I've got something in the truck."

"I don't care if it's a hundred thousand dollars in cash. She's on bed rest, and you're not coming in."

I pulled myself up off the couch, with a hand on the wall, and went to the top of the stairs.

"Pete, what's in the truck?"

Ty looked up at me from the bottom of the steps in a gray sweatshirt, with sawdust in his hair.

"A crib," he said.

Pete turned around.

"You built a crib."

"At the practice rink's maintenance shop. Their guy let me use the saw. I was there until one."

"At two in the morning."

"I couldn't sleep."

I looked at him for a long moment.

"Bring it up," I said.

"Lena," Pete said.

"I want to see the bolts."

It took the two men fifteen minutes to carry the pieces up the narrow stairs, with Pete muttering the whole way.

He left us in the apartment's living room and went back down, and slammed his bedroom door loud enough to say he was still listening.

Ty knelt on the floor and laid out the rails, the slats and a small bag of hardware.

The wood was pale maple.

On the headboard, carved into the center in a careful hand, was a tiny hockey stick crossed with a flower.

"I didn't know what to put there," he said, not looking up. "I couldn't do a name. I don't have one."

Keep reading free with an account. Start He Raised the Cup With His Mistress, But the Boy Was Mine from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.