The Secret That Broke Us novel · Chapter 15 of 32

Chapter 15: Ben's POV: Count It Out

Ben's POV

I went home first, because you don't show up at a woman's door in a uniform that smells like a ditch.

I showered, shaved, and stood in my kitchen for ten minutes holding a clean shirt.

The apartment had one chair at the table, and it had had one chair for three years.

I put the bracelet in my jeans pocket, in its folded paper towel, and I locked the door behind me before I could change my mind.

The sun was up over the lake and the road was empty.

I drove along the Lakeshore with the window cracked, thinking about June's hand over mine.

I was thirty-five years old.

I hadn't been nervous about a woman since I was twenty-four.

At the light by the Lakewalk, I saw the car.

It was a gray minivan on the shoulder with its flashers on and the driver's door hanging open.

A man stood in the road in a bathrobe and one slipper, waving both arms over his head.

I was already pulling over.

"My son," he said, before I'd stopped the truck. "He was sleeping and he, he just, he's blue, I think he's blue..."

I had my kit out of the back before he finished.

I always carry the kit.

The baby lay across the back seat on a folded blanket, three or four months old, in a dinosaur sleeper.

His lips were gray.

His chest wasn't moving.

I put two fingers against his neck and waited.

Nothing.

And there it was, the old cold drop in my stomach, the same one from two years ago.

My hands knew what to do.

The rest of me was somewhere else, in a kitchen, looking at a woman's face.

I tilted the head.

I breathed for him, twice.

Nothing.

"Call 911," I said to the father, without looking up. "Say infant not breathing. Say Highway 61 and the Lakewalk light. Do it now."

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