The Secret That Broke Us novel · Chapter 26 of 32
Chapter 26: Day Shift
Anders came off the antibiotics on Thursday with a clean culture and a bad temper.
The nurse handed him to me in a blanket, and he screamed the whole way down the hall.
I have never been so happy to be shouted at.
Ben carried the car seat.
He hadn't said a word about the text in two days.
I had let him not say it.
I wanted my son home first.
At nine that night the house was warm and the baby was asleep and the dishes were done.
I found Ben on the back porch with his hands on the rail, looking at the black yard.
"Okay," I said. "Now."
He didn't turn around.
"I put in for it in October," he said. "Before the porch. Before you let me in at all."
"Why?"
"Day shift. Two Harbors. Eight to five, home for dinner, nobody calls me at three in the morning."
"That's a good job."
"It's a very good job."
"Then why do you look like that?"
He turned.
He leaned back against the rail with his arms crossed over the navy jacket, and I could see him choosing words the way he chose where to put his hands on a patient.
"You have a baby," he said. "You just got out of a marriage with a man who lied to you every night for a year."
"I'm aware."
"I'm a guy whose phone goes off in the dark. I leave in the middle of dinner. I come home with things on my hands that I can't talk about, and some nights I'm not good company for two days after."
"Ben."
"You deserve somebody who's there. Not somebody you have to wait up for."
I looked at him for a while.
The porch light buzzed.
"Do you know what I did for nine years?" I said.
"You answered the phone."
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