Chapter 14: Say It

Leah's POV

Rupert came at nine, on foot, from a car he had parked around the corner so I wouldn't see him decide.

I waited on the studio step with my coat on and the recorder clipped inside my pocket.

Behind the glass door, in the dark front room, Rowan stood with his phone in his hand and his eyes on the street.

Rupert stopped at the bottom of the step.

He looked thin, and his tie was crooked.

"Leah, thank you for calling. I've been going out of my mind."

"Fran has your vials in her freezer," I said. "She knows what was in them."

His face did not move.

"I don't know what that is."

"It's saline."

"Mom said they were the clinic's own brand." He gave a small, reasonable laugh. "She handled the orders. I just gave the shots."

"You peeled the tape off the real label and wrote the date on a new one. At the kitchen counter, every night, for three years."

"That's a pharmacy thing. They come with a sticker."

"Brooke told me you said it was kinder than letting me hope."

That one reached him.

His mouth opened, and he looked up and down the street for someone to help him.

"She's lying. She's hormonal, she's scared of my mother, she'll say anything."

"She's thirty weeks pregnant, and she walked into a parking garage to tell me anyway."

"Leah."

"I got pregnant in August, Rupert. The week I quit. You asked me three times to do one more round. Why?"

He stood with his hands open at his sides.

I watched the lie try to form on his face and fail, one piece at a time.

"Because Mom said to," he said.

The street was quiet.

"She told me in the first year," he said. "She said the doctor had said no, and it was never going to happen for you."

"She said you'd leave if you knew, and you'd have nothing."

"She said it was kinder to let you try, and we'd take care of you."

"I thought if you kept trying, you'd stay."

"And Brooke?"

"Brooke was Mom's idea." His voice cracked. "I didn't want to."

"Then she was pregnant, and then you were pregnant too, and I didn't know how to stop it."

He put his hand over his face.

"I knew every night. I knew when I put the needle in. I'm sorry, Leah. I'm so sorry."

I let him cry for a moment.

Then I said, "Say the last part again. Slowly."