He Missed Our Daughter's Birthday novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Terms

Birdie asks where Daddy was, Randall begs at the door while his mother brings a breakfast tray and tells Stephanie to be gracious, and Stephanie sets her terms and takes him to the lab; Dennis shows the location history: eleven hospital visits since April.

Birdie was standing at the foot of my bed at six in the morning, still wearing her paper crown.

"Did Daddy come home?"

I had thought about this answer for five hours, and I still didn't have a good one.

"Not yet," I said. "Daddy is at a hospital, helping a little boy who is very sick."

"Is he going to be okay?"

"The doctors are trying."

Birdie thought about it.

"Then I guess it's all right," she said. "But he still missed my wish."

I pulled her into my arms and said nothing, because it was true.

At seven, a key turned in the front door.

Randall walked into the kitchen in yesterday's shirt, with his eyes red and his jaw unshaven.

Dennis was at the table with a coffee and had not left since midnight.

"Get out of my house," Dennis said, pleasantly.

"Dennis, it's fine," I said. "Go sit with Birdie in the den."

He stood up slowly, looked at Randall for a long moment, and went.

Randall came toward me with both hands out.

"Steph, I'm so sorry. I should have told you first. I should have stayed. I know how it looked."

"It looked like you walked out of her party."

"I know."

"Thirty-one people watched you do it."

He said nothing.

Birdie came to the kitchen door in her crown, and Randall dropped to his knees on the tile.

"Birdie Bug. I'm so sorry I missed your cake."

She folded her arms.

"I'm not telling you my wish," she said. "You weren't there."

Randall put his forehead against her small shoulder, and his back shook.

I let him have a moment.

Then I heard the front door open again, and a voice I knew called, "Yoo-hoo, only me."

Randall's mother came in carrying a tray of warm muffins with a linen napkin over them.

She kissed Birdie, kissed Randall, and looked at me last.

"Darling, you look exhausted," she said. "Randall told me everything on the phone this morning. It's a very sad situation. I hope you can be gracious."

"Gracious," I said.

"That child has no one. You of all people understand what that means."

"I understand that my husband left our daughter's birthday and told me it was work."

"A man can be wrong in the details and right in the heart, Stephanie."

She set the tray down on my counter, and I looked at it.

"Take the muffins with you," I said. "Please."

Her smile didn't change.

"I'll leave them for Birdie."

"Randall, would you walk your mother to her car?"

He did, and when he came back, he stood in the doorway with his hands at his sides.

"Stephanie, tell me what you need."

I had made a list at four in the morning. It had two lines.

"First, a phone that answers," I said. "If I call, you pick up. If you can't, you call back within the hour."

"Yes."

"Second, the truth before I find it. About Jasper, about Regina, about anything else. I hear it from you, in this kitchen, before I read it anywhere."

"Yes," he said. "Anything."

"And you take the test today. I'm driving you."

He looked at me.

"You're thirty-one weeks pregnant. I can drive."

"I'm driving," I said. "I want to watch them do it."

The lab was in a strip mall beside a dry cleaner, and the technician spoke in a bored, soft voice.

She swabbed the inside of each of Randall's cheeks and sealed the tips into two envelopes with his name on them.

"Jasper's sample is already in the system," she said. "Results in forty-eight hours."

"Already?" I said.

"The mother had him swabbed at the hospital last week."

I nodded.

Randall was looking at the wall poster of a smiling family in matching sweaters.

I drove us home in silence.

When we came in, Dennis was in the kitchen with my phone in his hand.

He had opened the app where we shared locations, and he was scrolling back through the history.

"Steph," he said. "Come look at this."

I stood beside him.

Dennis tapped a date in April, then another, then another.

Each one showed a blue dot parked at Rowan Children's Hospital on a Tuesday afternoon.

"I count eleven," Dennis said. "Since April."

Behind me, Randall opened his mouth and found nothing to say.

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