The Choices We Made novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: The Receipts

The cottage door opened before Weston could knock.

The man behind it was thin and gray, with a clear tube running under his nose to a tank on wheels.

He looked at Eliza first.

"You were my patient," he said. "You had a scar on your hip from a fall as a girl."

"I did," Eliza said.

"I remember everything about that night. That is the whole trouble."

He turned and led them in, dragging the tank behind him.

Weston closed the door and stayed close to her shoulder.

The old doctor lowered himself into a chair by the window and pointed at a shoebox on the table.

"Open it."

Eliza lifted the lid.

It was full of bank slips, each folded in thirds, each with a date written in pencil on the back.

"Constance paid me the week after," he said. "Then on the first of every month. Five years."

"For what?" Weston said.

"For the word stillborn."

Weston's hand went flat on the table.

"Say it all," Eliza said. "Start at the kick."

The doctor nodded slowly.

"They brought you in bleeding at seven months. Your waters had broken from the blow."

"Who brought me?"

"Your husband's mother. Her driver carried you."

Eliza's mouth went dry. "Not an ambulance."

"She said no ambulance, no press. I delivered the child in the family wing of the hospital with the door locked."

"And the baby?"

"A boy. Three pounds two ounces. He cried before I had finished cutting the cord."

He said it to the window.

"I have heard that sound every night for five years."

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