We Ran From Our Babies' Fathers, Then One Toddler Went Viral novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Nine Million Views
A clip of Bridget's son goes viral with Hannah and her daughter in the background, Bridget swears it is handled, Hannah packs to run, and the man at the door is her daughter's father.
Nine million people had watched my daughter eat a popsicle behind somebody else's child.
I found out at 7:40 on a Tuesday morning, standing at the counter of our flat above the bakery in Portugal.
Bridget was already at the kitchen table with her coffee.
Her phone lay face down next to the cup.
She flipped it over the second she saw me looking.
"Don't freak out," she said.
"When you say that, something is on fire."
"Nothing's on fire. My son went viral."
She slid the phone across the table.
A tourist had filmed the Sunday fish market.
In the middle of the shot, Bridget's three-year-old was shrieking at a seagull with both fists in the air.
The caption said: THIS TODDLER IS THE EXACT FACE OF JACK FERRIS???
I knew that face.
Dark curls, blue eyes, a crooked grin that sold three action franchises.
Max sat at the table right now, smearing jam across his toast and grinning at me with it.
"Nine million views," Bridget said. "It's a toddler and a bird. By Friday the internet will eat something else."
I watched the clip again.
Then I saw the blur behind Max.
A woman in a blue sundress, holding a little girl in a yellow sunhat.
The woman was me.
The girl turned toward the camera for half a second, and you could see her eyes.
They were grey.
They were Preston Aldridge's eyes, and I had spent three years praying nobody who knew him would ever look at them.
"My face is in it," I said.
"It's out of focus. Two seconds. Nobody is looking at the girl in the background."
I opened the comments.
The third one down said: Who is the little girl behind him? She looks like somebody.
Under it, forty thousand people had liked the reply.
"That's Preston Aldridge's kid, I swear. Same eyes, same jaw. Does he have a secret daughter??"
My thumb stopped moving.
Poppy sat across from me in her booster seat, feeding a crust to the cat that wasn't ours.
She was three years old and had no idea a stranger had just guessed her father's name.
"Hannah." Bridget took the phone back and stood up. "Breathe. I'll report the video. I'll call the app. I've got it handled."
"You've got it handled."
"I have never once let you down. Have I?"
She waited for me to say no.
I said, "No."
"Good. The signal's better outside."
She took her phone onto the balcony and slid the glass door shut behind her.
I watched her pace along the railing with her back to me, one hand pressed flat against her forehead, talking low.
I turned around and looked at my daughter.
Poppy held up her crust. "Mama, the cat says thank you."
"Tell the cat you're welcome."
The last time Preston Aldridge's name had come near us, it came as a text from his assistant's number, and I had kept it on an old phone in the bottom of a drawer.
Now the balcony door slid open.
"The app is taking the video down by tonight," Bridget said. "Promise. Eat your breakfast. Don't do anything dramatic."
I looked at her.
She smiled the smile she used on landlords.
"Give it until Friday," she said. "Please. One day. Don't move us."
I said okay.
I waited until she took Max downstairs for his bakery roll.
Then I pulled the suitcase down from the top of the wardrobe, the same one that came off the plane with us.
Bridget had said, the night we bought two one-way tickets, "We keep the babies. The dads can keep their problems."
I had said, "Whichever airport you pick, I'm on the plane."
So I packed anyway.
I packed Poppy's yellow sunhat, her stuffed fox, nine pairs of tiny socks and every pad of drawing paper I owned.
I did it fast, with the window shut and my phone on silent.
At four in the afternoon, the buzzer rang.
I stood very still in the hallway.
It rang again, twice, a patient, even rhythm.
Nobody from the bakery buzzed like that.
I went to the door and looked through the peephole.
A tall man in a dark shirt with the sleeves pushed up stood on the landing.
His phone was in his hand.
On its screen was the frozen frame of a little girl in a yellow sunhat.
I opened the door because there was nowhere else to go.
Preston Aldridge looked at me.
He had the same grey eyes.
"Hello, Hannah," he said. "I'd like to meet my daughter."
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