My Ex-Fiancé's Memory Game novel · Chapter 21 of 24

Chapter 21: The Bear

Sam didn't let her in.

He didn't shut the door either.

He just stood in it, filling it, and looked back at me over his shoulder.

My daughter was asleep on my chest. I'd been holding her for twelve hours and I wasn't ready to stop.

"It's your call," Sam said.

Carter's mother stayed in the hall.

She didn't push past him. Six months ago she would have.

"I'm not here for him," she said. "He doesn't know I came. I didn't tell his father either."

She held up the bear a little, then lowered it.

"I just want to say something. Then I'll go."

I thought about my stoop. My clinic waiting room. The ballroom.

"Say it from there," I said.

She nodded. She'd expected that.

"I believed him," she said. "In June. Every word. And when you came to the door with that text, I didn't want to know. So I made you the villain. In front of your neighbors. In front of sick people at your work. In front of everyone I know."

Her voice shook.

"I was wrong," she said. "I was cruel to you, and I was wrong, and I'm sorry."

Nobody had said that to me all year.

Not Carter. Not his father. Not anybody at the club.

I looked at her for a long time.

She looked so much older without the pearls.

"You can hold her," I said. "Once. Five minutes. In that chair, with Sam in the room."

Her hand went to her mouth.

"No pictures," I said. "Nothing for Carter. If you ever want to see her again, you ask me. Not a lawyer. Me."

"Yes," she said. "Yes. Thank you."

Sam stepped aside.

She sat down in the chair by the window, very straight, the bear on her knee.

I put my daughter in her arms.

Carter's mother held her like something made of spun sugar.

She didn't cry. She just looked, and touched one tiny fist with one finger.

"She has your chin," she said.

"She has my mother's chin," I said.

At five minutes I held out my arms, and she gave her back without a word.

She left the bear on the chair.

Sam moved in on the first of March.

He came with four boxes, a cast-iron pot, his grandmother's rolling pin, which she insisted on, and a crib in a flat box.

"I'll build it," he said.

"There are instructions."

"I don't need instructions. I've assembled rifles in the dark."

He built it in the nursery on Saturday.

When he was done, the side rail was on upside down and the mattress sloped downhill.

He took it apart.

He built it again on Sunday.

This time it was perfect, except the side that lowers was facing the wall.

I stood in the doorway with the baby on my shoulder and laughed until she spit up on me.

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