Water Broke at Midnight, Husband Waited for Her BFF's Hair, Baby's New Daddy Didn't novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: Garner Begs

My father stopped in the middle of the lawn, with every phone in the yard pointed at him.

"Tell them," Lacey said. "Tell them she's unstable."

He turned his head and looked at her for a long moment.

"I flew in because a woman I never met told me my daughter was dying," he said. "I didn't ask a single question. I got on a plane."

His voice was rough and slow.

"I did not call my daughter in nine years. Her mother died, and I couldn't stand to look at her face, because it was her mother's. That is mine to carry. It isn't hers."

He walked to me and stopped at my side.

"She is not sick," he said to the lawn. "She's the strongest person I know, and I wasn't there to see it."

I did not cry.

I took his hand, and it was shaking.

Lacey made a small noise, and then she turned in a circle, looking for someone to take her side.

Garner's mother stepped forward.

She had gone gray around the mouth.

She held out her hand to the nearest salesman, and he gave her his phone with the screen still lit on the page of the notebook.

She read the line aloud in a flat voice.

"Obeys the last voice in the room."

"Mrs. Ferris..." Lacey began.

"You slept in my guest bed for five weeks," Garner's mother said. "You ate at my table. You told me my son's wife was a danger to her child."

"I was trying to help."

"You wrote that my son does what he's told." She looked at Garner, and her chin trembled once. "And he does."

Garner said, "Mom."

"Be quiet."

She turned back to Lacey.

"Your bags will be at my curb at four o'clock. Do not come back to my house."

She walked off the lawn without looking at anyone, and she did not look at her son.

The yard began to empty.

A man in a vest took his wife's arm and led her to the gate.

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