I Had a Baby without You novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: The Pin

I read the name aloud, because Roark could not read the page.

"T. Crockett, on behalf of Draycott Holdings."

His hand stopped on my back.

"She bought the first result," he said.

"She, or Morton, or both."

"It doesn't matter which. She signed it."

He pulled up his jeans and fastened them, his face unreadable.

"The second test is real," he said. "I stood there while the doctor sealed it."

"I know."

"Then tomorrow I'll have it in writing."

"And then?"

"Then I take it to the one place where she can't talk her way out."

He did not say where.

The courier came at nine the next morning, a young man on a bicycle with a flat envelope.

The free clinic doctor had called ahead.

She stood in my diner in her puffy coat while I tore the seal.

*Probability of paternity: 99.9998%.*

I sat down on the stool and put my face in my hands.

Poppy climbed into my lap, sticky with syrup.

"Why are you crying, Mama?"

"Because I'm happy."

"That's silly," she said. "Happy people laugh."

Roark knelt on the linoleum in front of us.

He didn't ask.

He just put one hand over Poppy's small fist and left it there.

"I'm very happy too," he said hoarsely.

"Are you crying?"

"A bit."

"Do you want a cookie?"

"Yes, please."

That evening, the Draycott Foundation held its winter gala in the grand ballroom of the Draycott Hotel.

It was the same ballroom.

The same chandeliers.

Roark had not set foot in it for five years.

"You don't have to come," he said, standing in the diner doorway in a black tuxedo.

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