He Traded Our Baby to Save His First Love novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Story He Tells

Nigel arrives at her sister's door with a smooth lie and a gentle push toward Monday, and his mother follows with a lease notice.

Darby lives on the second floor of a brick house in Bloomfield, and she carried my overnight bag up the stairs herself.

She had listened to the whole story in the car without saying a word.

That was how I knew how angry she was.

"You sit," she said now, and pointed at the couch. "I'm making toast. I'm not asking."

I sat with a blanket on my knees and the paper copy in my lap.

It was ten past seven.

I had not cried yet, and I did not know when I would.

Someone knocked, three slow knocks, and Darby went still at the stove.

"Don't open it," I said.

"I wasn't going to." She put the knife down. "Who knows you're here?"

"The nurse at the desk. She'd have called him when I signed out."

The knocking came again.

"Geneva, it's me. Please."

Darby looked at me.

I nodded.

She pulled the door open on the chain, and Nigel stood there in yesterday's shirt with two coffees and a paper bag.

His eyes were red.

That was the worst part, if I'm honest.

They were really red.

"Can I come in?" he said. "Five minutes."

"No," Darby said.

"Let him," I said.

She unhooked the chain and stayed standing in the middle of the room with her arms crossed, in her EMS jacket.

Nigel put the coffees on the table.

He did not sit.

"I'm so sorry," he said. "I'm so sorry, Geneva. You were bleeding. The doctor said I had two minutes to decide, and you weren't awake, and I signed. I'd have done anything to take it back. I did not do this to hurt you."

It was a good speech.

He had practiced it on the ride down from the sixth floor.

"What time did you sign it?" I asked.

"What?"

"The form. What time was it?"

He rubbed his face with both hands.

"In the ER. Around seven, maybe. I don't remember, honey, it was chaos."

"Seven."

"Around."

"And I fell at six twenty."

"Right," he said. "So it was after."

I turned the page over on my knee, so the printing faced down.

He saw me do it.

His eyes dropped to the page, then came back up to my face, and he started to smile.

I have thought about that smile ever since.

It was the one he used on contractors who argued with an invoice.

"The doctors made a mistake with the clock," he said. "Hospitals do that constantly. Can we not do this today?"

"Today is the day I do it."

"Okay."

He nodded slowly, and he set the paper bag next to the coffee.

"I brought you soup. Cornelia's recipe."

Darby made a small sound in her throat.

"Geneva," he said, and his voice went soft. "I need to say one more thing, and I hate that I have to."

I waited.

"The conditioning starts Monday. Emmeline's team says you could be cleared in two weeks. If you're ready, when you're ready, there's nothing in the way now."

I sat very still with the blanket on my legs.

Nothing in the way.

He had said it gently, with his red eyes, and he meant it as comfort.

"Say that again," I said.

"I just mean that your body will be..."

"Nothing in the way."

He stopped.

"I'm not asking you to decide today," he said. "I'm asking you to think about her."

"I thought about her for a year. I sent her flowers every Friday."

"I know you did."

"And you took my baby to buy her a better chance."

"That isn't what happened."

"Then what happened at four ten?"

For the first time his face moved.

It was small, a flinch around the mouth, and then it was gone.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he said.

"Get out, Nigel."

"Geneva."

"Darby is going to count to three, and she is a paramedic, so she can count very fast."

"One," Darby said.

He took his coat off the back of the chair.

At the door he turned around and tried one more time, very quietly.

"She's dying. You know that. When you're done being angry, she'll still be dying."

"Two," Darby said.

He left.

She slid the chain on, and then she came and sat on the arm of the couch and put her hand on my head.

I let her.

"Four ten," she said. "You didn't tell me you had a time."

"I didn't tell him I had the page, either."

"Good. Eat the toast."

I was reaching for it when somebody knocked again, sharp and fast this time.

Darby looked through the peephole and swore under her breath.

It was Cornelia Whitfield, my mother-in-law, in a camel coat with an envelope in her gloved hand.

She did not say hello when Darby opened up.

"I'm told you walked out of the hospital against advice," Cornelia said, looking past her at me. "And I'm told you refused Emmeline."

"I refused my husband."

"It's the same thing." She held the envelope out to me. "The lease on your shop ends in thirty days. Whitfield Properties bought the building in March, and I'm not renewing a tenant who lets a girl die."

I took it.

It was already signed.

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