He Banned a Baby in Our Contract, Then Found His Daughter novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: The Armchair

Millie's POV

I took his shirt off him in the lamplight, one button at a time, and for the first time since the Hall I could see all of him.

It was his first night out of hospital, and the yellow house was empty.

Nan had come for Sadie at six with an overnight bag and a look, and she had said not to fetch her before breakfast.

I had not mentioned the folder in eleven days.

It lay at the bottom of my bag in the hall, and tonight I wanted to forget it.

His bedroom had an armchair in the bay of the window, old leather with wide arms, and in a year I had never seen him sit in it.

I walked him backward until the chair took his knees.

He sat down slowly, with his right hand on the arm and his left held tight against his side.

The surgeon had drawn a line on his sling and said nothing above the shoulder for six weeks.

"Hands on the arms of the chair," I said.

"The left one has to stay there anyway."

"Then you won't mind."

He laughed under his breath and laid both hands on the leather.

The lamp showed me the seam under his left collarbone.

It was four fingers long, glued shut, purple at the edges, and beneath it the skin rose in a hard smooth lump where the machine sat.

I looked at it for a long time, and he let me.

I laid one fingertip beside the seam, not on it.

"Does it pull?" I said.

"Only when you stare."

"I'll stare as long as I like," I said. "I paid for it in ribs."

His eyes closed, and his mouth shook, and then he was smiling.

There was a grey watch on his right wrist, with a strap the cardiology nurse had fitted herself.

The face said eighty-two.

"What does that do?" I asked.

"It watches me," he said. "If I go over a hundred and thirty, it beeps."

"For how long?" I said.

"Six weeks. Then I'm allowed to be excited again."

"You're allowed tonight," I said. "Just slowly."

I knelt on the rug between his knees and undid his belt.

He lifted his hips for me, and I drew his trousers and his shorts down his thighs and off, one leg at a time.

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