The Wife He Left for a Baby That Wasn't His novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: What Sam Did

Bree did not come in, and I did not ask her to.

She said nothing else about it.

She stood on my porch with one hand under her stomach and waited until the car that had brought her turned back onto Alder Street.

Then she went down the steps, one at a time, holding the rail.

I locked the door and slid down it until I sat on the hall floor.

I did not sleep that night either.

The next evening I waited until the last customer had left the bakery and the last tray was in the rack.

Sam had come in at six, uninvited and unannounced, and spent two hours fixing the squeaking hinge on the back door.

He was on his knees with a screwdriver when I said it.

"Bree came to my house."

His hands stopped.

"What did she say?"

"That you did something eight years ago."

He set the screwdriver down on the floor.

For a while he stayed there, kneeling in the doorway with his back to me.

Then he stood up and turned around, and his face was as flat as I'd ever seen it.

"I broke my brother's jaw," he said.

I had not been ready for that.

"At a family dinner. In front of my father and about fifteen guests. I hit him once, and he went through a chair."

"Why?"

"I was engaged. Her name doesn't matter now. We had a ring and a date and a house I'd been gutting with my own hands."

"What happened to her?"

"Dad offered her five hundred thousand dollars to leave. She took it." His voice stayed even. "She told me over the phone from the airport. Kyle had brokered it. He'd done the paperwork. He told me later he did it because it was the right thing for the family."

"The right thing."

"He smiled when he said it. I swung."

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