My Husband Hung Up on Me the Night I Gave Birth novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: The Deal

We tied him to the pipe in Mama's cellar, between the canned peaches and the old washing machine.

Mama had taped a dish towel over the split in his scalp, and she hadn't been gentle about it.

He woke at eight, with a headache and a wrist wired to a water heater.

Ryan sat on an overturned bucket in front of him.

I stood on the bottom step with Bean on my shoulder, where I could see both men.

"Where am I?" the man said.

"Somewhere with no neighbors and a very angry grandmother," Ryan said. "You came for my daughter."

The man worked his jaw. "I want a lawyer."

"You're not under arrest."

"Then I want to leave."

"You will." Ryan turned the man's phone over in his hand. "When you've told me about the doctor."

The man went still.

"What doctor?"

"Ms. D's next message. The one that came in while you were out." Ryan held up the screen. "Table one at the gala. A psychiatrist, and a form."

I had read it with my stomach turning over.

The doctor will be at my table, and he's ready. If the wife shows up raving, he signs the hold, and the paramedics are already on standby outside. Seventy-two hours at county. Let her scream at the walls.

I had not heard the words involuntary hold in my life. Mama had looked them up on her phone.

A doctor could sign a paper, and strangers could take me out of a ballroom and keep me for three days, away from my child.

And my husband, standing there with Gwen's hand on his arm, would be told I was sick.

"You'd have helped her do that," I said to the man.

He looked at me for the first time.

"I just drive," he said.

"You hit me in a parking garage."

"I took you for a hospital. You got a hospital." He shrugged with his one free shoulder. "She said you wouldn't be hurt."

"I had my daughter in the back of your van."

"You were fine."

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