My Husband Made Me Take a DNA Test While I Was Pregnant With His Baby novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Porch

Birgit has put Britta's things on the porch of her grandmother's cottage in front of the neighbors, Britta takes the quilt, the sewing machine and the recipe tin and refuses to give up the deed, and a voicemail from Nils's brother Anders tells her not to sign anything else.

My sister's truck was already at the curb when we got to Larsmont Road.

Pia was leaning on the hood with her arms crossed and flour still on her jeans.

She had come straight from the restaurant.

Nils parked behind her and stayed in the car.

My grandmother's cottage sat at the end of the road with the lake behind it, the gray shingles and the blue door I had painted myself.

On the porch there were eight boxes, two suitcases, and a black trash bag.

Birgit sat on the top step in her good wool coat with her purse in her lap.

Three neighbors had come out onto their lawns.

One of them was holding up a phone.

"I won't make a scene," Birgit called. "I only came to see that everything was handled with dignity."

Pia walked up the path ahead of me.

"There's a bag of laundry on the porch," she said, loud enough to carry. "Nobody does dignity in a trash bag."

"Pia," I said.

"I'm just reading the room."

I climbed the steps and opened the bag.

My grandmother's quilt was folded inside, the blue and white one she had sewn the year I was born.

It had been shoved in on top of a wet towel.

"That quilt was in the linen closet," I said.

"It was in the way," said Birgit.

"Why is it in a bag, Birgit?"

"Because you can't carry it out of the house in your arms, dear, not in your condition. I was being practical."

She said "your condition" slowly, so the lawns could hear.

I kept my voice low.

"I'm going to ask you to take your hands off my things."

"They're Nils's things too." She smoothed her coat. "A marriage is shared. And frankly, Britta, none of us can say yet what you're carrying."

The neighbor with the phone moved a step closer.

"I'm carrying a baby," I said. "Your son's. The lab will say so on Friday."

"Then you've nothing to worry about, have you?"

I looked at the blue door.

The lock was new.

I could see the shine on the brass.

It had been a plain old lock yesterday, and someone had been to the hardware store since.

"Who changed this?" I asked.

"Nils did, this morning," said Birgit. "For safety, while things are unsettled."

"This is my grandmother's house."

"It's where my son lives."

"The deed has Gran's name and then mine. It doesn't have his, and it doesn't have yours."

I turned to the lawns. I was shaking, and I didn't care.

"My grandmother left me this house," I said. "I'm leaving it tonight because I'm tired and my sister's here. I'm not giving it up. Whoever's filming, get my face."

Nobody lowered a phone.

Birgit put her purse strap over her shoulder.

"You are a very hard girl to feel sorry for," she said.

"I've noticed," I said.

Pia picked up two boxes and went down the steps and didn't look back.

I took the quilt out of the bag and folded it over my arm.

Then I went into the one place I could still reach, the sewing nook off the porch, through the side door that Gran had never locked.

Nils hadn't thought of that door.

I took her sewing machine in its hard case and the recipe tin from the shelf above it.

I carried both back down the steps.

Birgit watched the tin.

"That's a family recipe tin," she said.

"It's my family," I said. "It says Haugen on the lid."

By the time I got to the truck my arms were burning.

Pia had loaded the boxes and the suitcases in the bed and tied them down with a ratchet strap.

A white car pulled up behind us.

Kristin got out holding a covered casserole dish with both hands.

She had changed her sweater since the lab. It was pale yellow now, and soft.

"Britta," she said. "I made the hotdish you love. The one with the tater tots. Please take it. You're eating for two."

Pia stared at her. "You're not serious."

"I just don't want her to go hungry." Kristin's eyes went bright. "I'd do anything for her. She knows that."

She held the dish out.

I looked at the cover of the dish.

It was my grandmother's glass lid, from the cottage kitchen.

"Where did you get that lid?" I asked.

Kristin glanced at it.

"Oh, from the house. Birgit said I could borrow it. She said you'd never mind."

I took the dish.

Pia raised an eyebrow, and I shook my head at her.

Then I carried the hotdish to Birgit's car, put it on the roof, and went back to the truck.

Pia drove us around the curve of the lake without saying anything until the house was out of sight.

My phone buzzed on the dash.

It was a voicemail from an Ontario number I didn't know.

I put it on speaker.

A man's voice, low and rough and tired.

"This is Anders Ekdahl," he said. "I'm Nils's brother. We said maybe ten words at the funeral, and I'm sorry to call this way. Don't sign anything else. Call me back."

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