My Husband's DNA Test Said Our Baby Wasn't His novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Binder

Emme rebuilds the weekend of the party from her own files, and her mother-in-law lets herself in and touches the baby's ear.

On Monday I called in sick for the first time in six years.

Floyd's side of the bed was still made. He had texted at midnight: Staying at the ranch. Dad's calmer. Please don't do anything.

I didn't answer.

I put Eli in his bouncer by the kitchen window and took the binder down from the shelf above the washer.

I keep everything. Receipts, warranty cards, the paper bracelet from Eli's birth.

It all goes in a three-ring binder, in date order, with tabs.

Floyd used to tease me about it. He said I was the only woman in Texas who could find a 2019 oil change in under a minute.

The newest tab held two years of fertility paperwork from Lakeline Fertility Associates in Austin.

Blood work. Scans. Bills I had paid on the first of the month.

I have PCOS, and my cycles never ran on a schedule.

We tried a year of pills and timed nights, then a year of not trying.

After the second year we stopped treatment. Doc Barksdale said to give my body a rest.

Eli came anyway.

Behind the last tab was the first scan, and Doc had signed it himself.

He had measured Eli on the screen with his own two fingers on the wand. He had written the date of conception in the margin.

The weekend of March 8.

That was Harlan's seventieth birthday party at the ranch.

I remembered it. I had a migraine, and I lay down in the guest room for two hours.

Harlan brought a glass of water upstairs and left it on the nightstand.

Floyd stayed downstairs with clients, so his brother drove me home.

My college ex was there too. He buys trucks for a hauling company now, and he talked to me on the porch for five minutes.

That was the whole weekend.

I had been over it a hundred times since dinner, and it came out the same each time.

At ten, somebody turned a key in my front door.

Marlene let herself in the way she always did. She was carrying a gift box with a silver ribbon.

"You left this at the ranch," she said.

Inside was a silver rattle. Doc had given it to Eli when he was a month old, and it was engraved with two letters: E.T.

I hadn't left it anywhere.

Marlene didn't sit. She was sixty-six, with a silver bob and pearl studs, and she had never once come into my house without taking off her shoes.

She kept them on.

She walked to the bouncer and lifted Eli out, and for a second I thought she would simply carry him out the door.

Instead she turned his head toward the window light and touched the top of his ear.

At the front edge of it, up high, there was a tiny pit in the skin. A little dimple. He'd had it since birth.

"That's Floyd's ear," she said quietly. "Floyd has that exact ear."

I stared at her.

Every other person at that table had asked me for a name. Not one of them had looked at my son's face.

"Then why didn't you say so last night?" I said.

She didn't answer.

She looked at the ear a long time. Then she put Eli back in the bouncer and tucked the blanket around his legs.

"Doc delivered both my boys, you know," she said. "Forty years of babies in this town."

She went to the door and stopped with her hand on the knob.

"Women don't always remember a night, dear. That's not a sin."

She did not turn around.

"Lying about it is."

The door shut behind her.

I stood in my kitchen with my hands shaking.

She hadn't said the baby was Harlan's grandson. She hadn't said he wasn't. She had said he had Floyd's ear, and then she had told me I was lying.

Those two things did not go together, and she had known it when she said them.

I picked up the rattle and read the engraving again.

Then I went to the mirror by the front door and pushed my own hair back from my ears.

Mine were smooth.

Floyd's ears I knew by heart. I had kissed the left one the night he proposed.

I remembered the small pit at the top, and I remembered that I had never once thought about it.

I picked my phone up off the counter and, for the first time since dinner, I didn't text Floyd.

I opened a new search window and typed: independent DNA test, mother, baby, father, rush.

← Chapter 1 · All chapters · Chapter 3 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend