He Told Me I Lost Our Baby, and Five Years Later I Met Him at His Door novel · Chapter 17 of 24
Chapter 17: Long Distance
Siobhan's POV
The call from Lisbon came on the Tuesday, at one in the afternoon.
I was standing in the kitchen of the white house in Quincy with a dish towel over my shoulder.
I did not know the number, and I knew the voice at once.
"Siobhan," said the workshop owner, in her careful English. "I will not say hello. I will say it quickly, because it is long distance and I am an old woman."
"Say it."
"The chief restorer's bench is empty. The man is retired. I have looked at nine people since you left. I do not like any of them."
I sat down on the kitchen stool.
I looked out of the window at the chrysanthemums, and a boy in a yellow raincoat splashing through a puddle by the gate.
Fintan had been in this house four days.
He had a toothbrush on the sink and a drawing of a hundred-legged dog taped to the fridge.
"I am not offering it today," the old woman said. "I am telling you it is there. You have a year, perhaps two, and then I give it to a stranger."
"I can't say yes," I said.
"I did not ask you," she said.
"I can't say no, either."
"I know. You have a face I can hear on the telephone. Is it a man?"
"It's a boy," I said.
There was a long silence on the line, and the faint hiss of an ocean.
"Ah," she said, very gently. "Then you will tell me when you can."
She hung up.
I stood with the phone against my chest.
I had a bench in a city on a hill, and a life that had taken me five years to build.
I did not have to give it up.
It was mine, whatever happened.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of He Told Me I Lost Our Baby, and Five Years Later I Met Him at His Door are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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