The Wife Isn't Me novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: Harbor Birth Center

"Come in before you freeze," Andrew Galbraith said. "Mind the step. Everybody trips on it."

I tripped on it.

He caught my elbow without comment and let go the second I was steady.

Inside, Harbor Birth Center looked like somebody's grandmother's house that happened to have a fetal monitor.

Two birthing rooms with big tubs and quilts on the beds. A kitchen. A plant on every windowsill, all of them slightly dying.

"Your plants are dying," I said.

"They're resting."

"That one's brown."

"It's a very tired fern."

Trish grinned at me behind his back and mouthed, ten minutes.

His office was a closet with a desk in it.

"Tell me all of it," he said. "Start with the part you're most embarrassed about. It saves time."

So I did.

I told him I'd dated a man for two years who said he was single.

I told him about the brass plate and the cream sheets and the knuckles.

I opened the unicorn binder to BAD GUY STUFF and showed him the worksheet.

He read every line of that photo.

When he got to the sticky note, his jaw went tight.

"Per E.L.," he said.

"You know the initials."

"I know the handwriting under them. That's the head of obstetrics. I trained under him." He set the binder down very gently. "I'm sorry. Go on."

I told him about the fire alarm.

He laughed. It came out of him, a short rough sound.

"You pulled the fire alarm in the Lowther Suite."

"It seemed like the thing to do."

"That's the best thing I've heard in three years."

Then I told him about the kitchen, the check, the backdated contract, and my badge at Mercy blinking red.

He stopped laughing.

"Why did you leave Lowther?" I asked. "Trish says nobody knows."

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