He Let Our Baby Die Over a Hospital Bill novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: Prewitt

Gina takes Nadine home to her couch, Nadine takes her maiden name back, and at the Cherry Creek house Marla is boxing up the crib for a refund and tells her she'll pay half the funeral or the baby goes to the county.

I made Gina report the post from my phone, her phone and the hospital's guest wifi.

By morning it had forty thousand likes.

Somebody in the comments wrote, "This is what real partnership looks like." Somebody else asked for the discount code.

They discharged me on Sunday.

Holden didn't come. He sent a text from a new number.

"Car's yours to use this week. Kaylin can drive you. Mileage logs automatically."

I deleted it.

Gina came instead, in her red glasses and a hoodie with a coffee stain on the front.

Her son came with her in his soccer socks.

He was seven and very serious about the wheelchair.

"Can I push it?"

"Only to the elevator," Gina said. "Then a grown-up pushes, because you drive like your dad."

"I'm a good driver."

"You drove a shopping cart into a lady."

"She was fine."

At the curb, the nurse helped me into Gina's little silver hatchback. The car seat was in the back for him.

Nobody said anything about the other car seat, the one still in its box in my garage.

Gina's apartment was the second floor of a brick building off Federal Boulevard. Two bedrooms, one bathroom, a couch the color of oatmeal.

She'd made the couch up with her good sheets.

"You're on the couch because the kid's bed has a rocket on it, and you'd hate it," she said. "I'd give you mine, but mine has me in it."

"The couch is perfect."

"It's a hundred and nine dollars from a guy on Craigslist. It's not perfect. But it's yours as long as you want it."

I lay down slowly.

Her son stood beside me holding a box of cereal with a cartoon tiger on it.

"Do you want some? You can eat it dry. It's better dry."

"Is it?"

"Mom says it isn't. But it is."

He poured some into my hand.

I ate it dry.

He watched every piece go in.

"See?"

"You're right," I said. "It's better dry."

He went to his room and came back dragging a blue blanket with satin edges, worn through in one corner.

"This is mine. You can have it until you're better. Then I need it back."

Gina turned around and went into the kitchen fast.

I heard the water running a long time.

That night my milk came in.

Nobody had warned me it would. My body didn't know she was gone.

I sat on the edge of Gina's bathtub at three in the morning with bags of frozen peas inside my shirt.

Gina sat on the closed toilet lid and held my hand and said nothing at all.

It was the right thing.

On Tuesday we went to Cherry Creek for my things.

Holden's house was three stories of white walls and glass. He'd bought it before me, and the deed said so.

My key still worked.

I'd half expected it not to.

"I'll take the closet," Gina said. "You point. Don't lift anything over a gallon of milk or your stitches will come out your belly button."

"That's not how stitches work."

"I'm a coder, not a surgeon. Point."

I pointed. She packed.

My jeans and my gray cardigan went in first.

Then the shoebox from the top shelf with every receipt of our marriage in it, because I'd never once trusted the app's math.

Then my passport and my birth certificate.

Nadine Prewitt, born in Pueblo, Colorado.

I held it a minute.

Then I wrote PREWITT on every box with a black marker in big letters.

"Are you sure?" Gina said.

"I was a Prewitt for twenty-six years. I was a Keefe for three. Prewitt's ahead."

She grinned for the first time since Thursday.

Then we heard a tape gun at the end of the hall.

The nursery.

I hadn't let myself think about it.

Holden had let me pick the paint as long as I paid for it.

Pale green.

Marla was on her knees on the rug, folding the crib.

She had the box from the store, and she was fitting the slats back into it in the right order.

The receipt was taped to the lid.

The mobile I'd sewn by hand was in the trash can by the door.

She looked up and smiled the soft smile she used at church.

"Oh. Nadine, dear. I didn't know you were coming."

"What are you doing?"

"There's a thirty-day return window. It seemed silly to waste it."

Gina made a sound behind me.

"It's still in perfect condition," Marla went on, "nobody ever slept in it."

I couldn't speak.

I walked across the rug, took the mobile out of the trash and held it against my chest.

Little felt moons, little felt stars.

"I'm keeping this," I said.

"Of course, dear. That's yours. You made it."

She smoothed the lid of the box.

"And while you're here, Holden asked me to pass something on, since you broke his phone."

"I didn't break it. I threw it away."

"He's spoken to the funeral home."

My heart lifted for half a second. I hate that it did.

Marla stood up, brushing carpet lint off her navy slacks, and wound her little gold watch.

"It's four thousand two hundred for the plot and the small casket. He'll pay his half. You'll pay yours."

"I have three dollars and fifty cents."

"Then you'll find it, dear. Or he says the county has a program for unclaimed infants."

She said it casually, without an ounce of warmth.

"They do a very nice job. They cremate them together and scatter them somewhere."

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