Chapter 4: The Night I Bled

Colette's taillights had barely turned the corner when I asked my first question.

"Did you tell her about the baby I lost?"

Dalton stood at the bottom of my father's steps, and the porch light I had never seen steady lit his face.

"Yes."

"Why?"

"She asked why I was so careful about you. I said you'd been through something."

He rubbed his beard with a shaking hand.

"She asked what, and I told her."

"That was mine to tell."

"I know. I'm sorry."

"You're sorry a lot today."

He took that without answering.

His mother had driven off ahead of Colette, waving from the car window.

My father had gone inside. I could hear him in the kitchen running water he did not need.

I sat on the porch swing and put my hand on my stomach, because the baby had started kicking.

"Term one," I said. "You answer me truthfully."

"I will."

"Four weeks ago I woke up at two in the morning and I was bleeding."

His head came up.

"You said you were at the Lakeview job site," I said. "You said a pipe burst and you'd be late."

"Noe."

"I called you a dozen times. I called you until my father came and drove me to the hospital himself."

"I remember."

"Where were you?"

He looked at me for a long moment.

I could see him choose.

I could see the old careful lie sitting right there, ready.

I watched him put it down.

"I was at Chester Street," he said.

The swing creaked under me.

Keep reading free with an account. Start He Was There for Her Baby, Not Mine from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.