38 Weeks Pregnant And Done Waiting novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: What His Father Heard

By nine that morning I was in a postpartum room with a window, a drip in my hand and Theo asleep in a clear bassinet at my elbow.

June had gone to move her car.

I kept saying her name to the empty chair beside me and then remembering that she wasn't in it.

Brett's father came in without knocking, which I would not have expected from him.

He stood in the doorway with his hat in both hands.

A woman in a gray cardigan and a hospital lanyard came in behind him and stopped by the wall.

"Mrs. Lowry? I'm the unit's social worker. I'll just sit, if that's all right."

"It's Ms.," I said. "Lowry."

"Ms. Lowry. Thank you."

Brett's father took the visitor's chair and set his hat on his knee.

He looked at the bassinet for a long time.

"May I?"

"You can look."

"That's what I meant."

He looked.

Theo had one fist beside his ear and a crease between his eyebrows.

"He has my mother's forehead," said Brett's father, quietly. "God help him."

I almost smiled, and I did not want to.

"Why are you here?"

"Because Dale Scofield stood on my porch at one o'clock this morning," he said. "He didn't email it. He held the phone out in front of him until I took it, and I listened to the whole file in my own kitchen. All forty-seven minutes."

"I told him not to send it to anyone."

"He didn't send it. He brought it, and that is a different thing, and I'm grateful."

"You listened to all of it."

"Twice."

His hands didn't move on the brim of his hat.

"I've run a company for thirty years, Millicent. I have fired men for less than I heard on that couch, and I never once wanted to hit one."

"Brett's your son."

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