The Night I Gave My Best Friend's Brother a Child novel · Chapter 20 of 24

Chapter 20: The Garden

Rhett's POV

I walked my sister around the side of the house, to the rose garden our mother had planted.

I did not take her arm.

Nobody stopped us.

Behind me the yard was a low roar of voices, and Edith's was the only one that cut through it.

"Eat your cake," she was saying. "I'm not finished."

The garden was quiet.

The roses were just out, the early ones, and the light was going gold on the brick wall.

Bridget stood by the sundial with her arms wrapped around herself.

She had stopped crying somewhere on the walk, and her face was blank and tired.

"I'm going to say what I came here to say," I said. "You'll let me finish."

"All right."

"I lay in that bed in Germany for nine days. I could not feel my left leg, and I could not lift my arm over my head. You came in every morning with coffee and a clean shirt."

"I did."

"I remember it. I remember the shirts." My voice stayed level, and I was proud of that. "And on the fourth day you sat on the edge of the bed and told me I'd never be a father."

"The doctor..."

"Don't."

She closed her mouth.

"I thought I'd lost the only thing I never knew I wanted," I said. "I lay there, and I decided to stop wanting. That's what I did with the next five months. I stopped. I stopped answering Edith's calls. I stopped eating. I let you do the talking at the VA, and I thanked you."

"Rhett..."

"And all that time, my daughter was growing up on Pruitt Street, nine minutes from your condo. You stood at her birthday cake with a candle in your hand and sang to her."

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