My Fake-Dead Husband Came Crawling After I Became an Heiress novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: Break Something

Cora lay propped on a hospital bed with her hair stuck to her forehead and both hands wrapped around the rails.

A monitor beside her counted the baby's heartbeat out loud.

The nurse said four centimeters and left us alone.

"You came," Cora said.

"You sent your boyfriend down a stairwell for me."

"He's not my boyfriend." She tried to laugh and it turned into a groan. "He's a man I have to keep from working things out."

A contraction folded her in half.

I stood at the foot of the bed and did not help her.

When it passed, she opened her eyes and looked at me with no sweetness left in them at all.

"Dalton asked me about the glass," she said. "In the car, on the way here. He asked it twice."

"What did you tell him?"

"That he was tired."

"Did he believe you?"

"He's believed me since I was nineteen." Her mouth shook. "I think he stopped tonight."

I waited.

She turned her face toward the wall.

"If something goes wrong," she said, "don't let your mother near her."

"She's your mother."

"She's the one who watched me do it, Hallie. She stood at the end of the table and watched."

My stomach dropped.

It was the closest thing to a confession I had ever heard from her, and she had said it to a wall.

"Say that again," I said, "with the doctor in the room."

Her head came round fast.

"You think I'm stupid?" she said. "I'm having a baby, not a breakdown."

Another contraction took her, harder, and the monitor sped up.

I stayed at the foot of the bed through the whole thing.

I did not hate the sound it made.

"I'm naming her after a flower," Cora gasped. "Not after anybody."

"It's a good name."

"Don't be kind to me."

"I'm not being kind to you," I said. "I'm being kind to her."

Something went across her face that I could not read.

Then a nurse came in with a clipboard, and I walked out into the corridor.

Dalton's mother stood against the wall with her bag clutched to her chest.

She would not look at me.

Zane was waiting at the end of the hall with my coat.

"Your father's asleep," he said. "The doctor wants you out of here for six hours."

"The baby's coming."

"The baby will come with or without you."

I let him walk me to the car.

The Appleton house was dark when we got in, and the lake was black behind the windows.

I stood in the front hall and could not make myself take my coat off.

"Eat something," Zane said.

"I'm not hungry."

"Hallie."

"I let a woman who ruined my life tell me the name of her daughter. I held still for it." I laughed, and it came out cracked. "What is wrong with me?"

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