Claimed by My Ex-Husband novel · Chapter 8 of 48

Chapter 8: The Baby He Never Knew

"What baby?" Angelo said again, because I hadn't answered.

I looked down at my hands.

"I found out on a Wednesday," I said. "Two lines on a test, in the bakery bathroom."

"Tala."

"I was going to tell you Friday. I bought a bottle of that sparkling juice you like and planned a dinner."

He stood in the middle of his study with his arms hanging.

"Thursday night I was in the lobby of the Grand. Friday morning you were gone."

"You were pregnant."

"Six weeks."

"And you signed those papers."

"I signed them on the fourth day, yes. I was pregnant and I signed them."

He made a sound I had never heard from a person.

It was low, and it didn't have any words in it.

"Two weeks after you left," I said, "I was at work, at the bench, with my hands in dough. It started as a cramp."

"Don't."

"You asked."

"I know." His voice shook. "Go on."

"Dessa drove me to the emergency room. It was over by the time we got there. They gave me a paper with a number on it."

I looked up at him.

"I sat in a plastic chair and I had my phone in my hand the whole time. I had your number open. I didn't press it."

"Why not?"

"Because you hadn't called me either."

That was it.

That was the sentence I had been carrying around for five months.

I said it out loud in his study, with the late sun on the wall, and nothing in me broke.

Something in him did.

Angelo sat down on the floor.

Not in the chair, not on the edge of the desk.

He folded onto the carpet with his back against the filing cabinet and his knees up, and he put his face in both hands.

His shoulders shook.

I had known him six years.

I had never once seen him cry.

I put the crutches aside and got down onto the carpet next to him, awkward, my bad leg stuck out in front of me.

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