Traded to His Enemy, Pregnant With His Heir novel · Chapter 24 of 48

Chapter 24: The Open Door

He gave it to me in the hall outside the guest room, two days later, with the baby asleep in the crook of my arm.

It was a small brass key.

I knew it before it touched my palm.

I'd left it in the lock on the inside of that door the morning I moved down the hall to his room, and I'd never thought about it again.

"You kept it," I said.

"I never changed the lock." He put his hand on the door. "There's still only one key. It's still on your side."

I turned it.

The door swung open.

The guest room was gone.

The bed I'd bled on was gone, and the dresser where he'd set down a mug of ginger tea and stepped back into the hall.

The walls were the soft green of new leaves.

There was a white crib under the window, with the harbor going blue and silver behind it.

A rocking chair. A shelf of books in three languages.

And a basket in the corner piled so high with Galina's knitting that it had started to fall over.

"When did you do this?"

"While you were busy having her." He looked a little embarrassed. "Galina chose the color. The brigadiers built the crib. It took four of them and a lot of swearing."

I laughed, and the baby frowned in her sleep.

I didn't put the key back in the door.

I put it in the pocket of my robe.

We named her in July, in the little gold church in Brighton, on the hottest Sunday of the year.

The priest held her up in front of the icons and sang her name.

Galina.

The old Galina was standing beside me in the front row in her navy dress.

When she heard it, her whole face went still.

She turned and looked at me.

"No," she said. "I said no. One is enough."

"Then she'll need two," Ilya said.

Galina put her hand over her mouth.

She stood very straight in front of everyone, and the tears ran down her face, and she didn't wipe them once.

After, there was one long table at the restaurant on Commonwealth Avenue.

Both families at it, for the first time anybody could remember.

The brigadiers at one end with their wives, and the captains from Hanover Street at the other, and in between, everybody passing bread and arguing about baseball.

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