He Let Our Daughter Die for Twenty-Three Dollars novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Formula Man

Colter Isherwood of First Step arrives as a formula rep with twenty-four cans and a recording pen, tells Annabel to stay and collect proof rather than run, and signs her tab; Sheldon's SUV pulls in early with the whole Hanley family.

Sheldon left for the office at eight on Wednesday.

He kissed the baby's forehead, said nothing to me, and took his coffee with him.

I stood at the window until his car cleared the gate.

At nine the doorbell rang.

A man stood on the step with a hand truck and two cartons stacked on it.

He wore a canvas jacket and a name badge from a formula company.

"Delivery for the baby," he said, loud enough for the gate camera.

I let him in and shut the door.

His voice dropped. "Colter Isherwood, First Step. Is anyone else in the house?"

"Only my daughter."

"Then let's get these out of sight."

The cartons held twenty-four cans of fortified preemie formula.

I did the sum before I could stop myself.

Twenty-four cans at thirty-four dollars was eight hundred and sixteen dollars.

"I can't take these," I said.

"They're from our pantry. Donors pay for them."

"Then I'll write down who donated."

He looked at me for a moment, and then he pulled a pen from his jacket and handed it over.

I found a page in the baby's feeding log and wrote: *Owe First Step, 24 cans, $816.*

Colter took the page, read it and signed under mine: *Received. W.H.*

"You're keeping a tab," he said.

"Everything I've ever been given in this house had a price. I'd rather know it."

He didn't argue.

We carried the cartons to the laundry room and stacked them behind the detergent, where Sheldon had never once gone.

Then Colter washed his hands to the wrist at the kitchen sink before he touched my daughter.

He held her in one steady arm, and she didn't fuss.

"She's small," he said. "She's also got a strong grip on my finger."

"You've been watching me for five minutes."

"I've been reading your file for two days." He handed her back. "Did he ever hit you?"

"No."

"Then he's been smarter than most."

He said it plainly, and somehow that made it easier to hear.

"Why do you want me to stay?" I said. "You said I could leave today."

"You can. If you walk out today with a five-week-old and two hundred dollars, he calls every donor in Aspen before lunch and says you took his baby."

"He would."

"A lie like that sticks to a mother faster than the truth sticks to him."

I sat down at the kitchen table.

My hands had started to shake, and I put them under my thighs.

"So I stay."

"For a few days. You stay and you collect."

He took a pen from his pocket and set it beside the sugar bowl.

It looked like an ordinary pen, with a clip and a blue cap.

"It records for twelve hours. Press the clip twice."

"Record what?"

"Him. Every time he says the rule out loud. Every time he refuses the baby something and tells you why."

I turned the pen over in my fingers.

"The draw isn't a secret," I said. "Everyone in his family knows about the bowl."

"Everyone knows he's strict about money. Nobody has heard him say, in his own voice, that a premature baby doesn't change the rules."

I thought of the nurse's face yesterday, and of Sheldon's smooth voice in the doorway.

"He said it in front of the nurse."

"Then he'll say it again," Colter said. "Men like him think they're only being reasonable."

I clipped the pen inside the cuff of my cardigan.

"What about the emails?" I said. "The ones that made it look like me?"

"That's the second thing. The first thing is that your daughter eats."

"And the third?"

He almost smiled.

"The third thing is that you stop apologizing to a man who hasn't earned one."

I opened my mouth to say I hadn't been apologizing.

Then I remembered the last two years, and shut it.

Colter stood and zipped his jacket.

"I'll come back Friday. If anything happens before then, use the prepaid. Don't use the house phone, and don't use yours."

"Why not mine?"

"Because your husband pays the bill on it, and he can read every message."

I walked him to the front door.

He stopped with his hand on the knob and looked past me, through the glass beside the door.

The gate was sliding open.

A black SUV rolled up the drive.

Behind it came a red hatchback I knew by its Second Chance Fund sticker, and a gray sedan with Carol's cross hanging from the mirror.

"Sheldon's early," Colter said quietly.

"That's his foster family. All of them."

"Back door?"

"The kitchen. Go, go."

He went down the hall at a walk, not a run, which I found I admired.

I pressed the pen flat in my sleeve and picked up my daughter.

The front door opened behind me.

Sheldon's voice filled the hall.

"Annabel. We brought lunch for everyone."

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