The Night I Gave My Best Friend's Brother a Child novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Night on Route 9

Rhett shows up on her porch, they set terms for a DNA test and silence, and Bridget texts that Rhett left dinner like the house was on fire.

"Four and a half," I said.

It was out before I could stop it.

Rhett's hand stayed flat on the roof of my car.

He was counting, and I watched him do it.

February to November.

Then November to now.

"Don't follow me," I said.

I rolled the window up on his fingers, and he took them away.

I drove home with the radio off.

In the back seat Effie sang about a duck that had lost its shoe.

I gave her mac and cheese and a bath, and she told me twice that the tall man was grumpy.

"He had a stick," she said. "Why did he have a stick?"

"His leg is hurt, baby."

"Does he have a Band-Aid?"

"I think he needs a bigger one."

She was asleep by eight, with one arm flung over her stuffed fox.

I washed the same plate for ten minutes.

At half past ten, headlights swung across the kitchen wall.

A truck door shut, and a cane tapped up my porch steps.

I put the chain on and opened the door four inches.

He stood under the yellow bug light with his jaw set.

He had changed out of the dinner clothes into a gray jacket.

It was the same kind of jacket he had worn that night.

I noticed that and was angry at myself for noticing.

"Go home, Rhett."

"I can't."

"You can. It's a pickup truck."

"I need you to tell me she's not mine," he said. "Say it to my face and I'll leave."

I opened my mouth.

The words did not come.

His shoulders came down slowly.

"Then let me in," he said. "Please."

I took the chain off.

We stood in my kitchen, with the refrigerator humming and Effie's drawings under the magnets.

He did not sit.

He looked at the drawings one at a time, and when he got to a purple horse with five legs, he stopped.

"Did you know who I was?" he asked.

"What?"

"Tonight, at the door. Before that, all these years. You've been my sister's best friend for nine of them."

"I didn't know your name was Rhett until your grandmother said it in the hallway," I said. "Bridget calls you Sarge. She says my brother, she says Sarge. She has never once said Rhett to me."

"You sat at my sister's table for years."

"Not with you. Never with you. I didn't know your face."

He turned and looked at me for a long time.

I could see him trying to decide whether to believe it.

"I called you," I said. "The number on the motel pad."

"You called?"

"Twice. The first week of March. The first time it rang out. The second time it went to voicemail, and the box was full."

"What did you say?"

"The first time, nothing. The second time I said my name and where we met, and that you should call me."

I had said more than that, but I didn't tell him.

Rhett put his hand over his mouth.

"I never heard it," he said. "That phone went in a box with my gear. I handed it to someone to hold."

"Who?"

"Somebody I trusted," he said, and he did not say more.

I let it go.

I was tired, and he looked tired, and there was a sleeping child down the hall.

"I need a test," he said. "Not because I think you're lying. Because I was told in a hospital bed I would never have a child, and I need paper in my hand before I believe it."

"Fine."

"A cheek swab from her. One from me. A private lab."

"Fine," I said again. "But I have rules."

"Say them."

"One. Nobody hears about this until the result is back. Not Bridget, not your grandmother, nobody."

"My grandmother already saw her."

"Then she can keep her mouth shut for a week."

He almost smiled, and then did not.

"Two," I said. "Effie doesn't get told anything. She's four. You are a friend of her mother's."

"Agreed."

"Three. You don't touch me."

I had not planned to say that one.

It came out hard, and the kitchen got very quiet.

Rhett's eyes went to my mouth and came back up.

"Agreed," he said, and his voice was lower. "And I get Saturdays with her."

"As a friend."

"As a friend. With you in the room."

"Fine."

"Can I see her?" he asked.

I led him down the hall to Effie's door and stopped in front of it.

He stood in the doorway with the hall light behind him.

Effie lay on her back with her mouth open and her fox under her chin.

The cowlick stood up at the crown of her head.

Rhett did not go in.

He gripped the doorframe with the hand that did not hold the cane, and his knuckles went white.

"Four and a half," he said, very quietly.

"Yes."

"I was in a sand pit on her third birthday," he said. "I didn't know she existed."

He left without saying goodnight.

I stood at the window and watched his taillights go to the end of Pruitt Street and turn.

My phone buzzed on the counter.

It was Bridget.

"Grandma says Rhett left dinner like the house was on fire. You wouldn't know why, would you?"

A smiling face came after it, and then a second one.

← 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