A Secret in Her Father's House, A Pregnancy Neither Can Hide novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: Sigrid

By afternoon the house was too quiet.

The cake box still sat on the kitchen table.

Alana had put a bandage on the cut at Henrik's temple and swept the broken mug into the bin, and neither of them had said a word about Janice since.

He stood at the sink and washed a plate that was already clean.

"Say it," she said.

"Say what?"

"Whatever you've been holding since this morning. You've had your back to me for an hour."

He shut off the water.

He dried his hands on the towel, slowly, and he turned and looked at her.

"You came every summer," Henrik said. "From nine to twenty. Two months, and then Christmas. You'd get out of the car with your bag, and you'd say hello like a guest."

"I was a kid."

"I know. I'm not blaming you for it." His voice was low and careful. "I'm telling you what I saw. Every August your mother's car came up the drive, and you hugged me on the porch like you were shaking hands, and you got in. Seventeen years. You never once asked to stay."

She stared at him.

"You think I didn't want to?"

"I don't know what you wanted. That's what I'm saying. I never knew. You never said it, and I never asked, and we both stood in that driveway every year and waited for the other one."

Her eyes stung.

"I was nine," she said. "I was ten, and twelve, and fifteen. I thought if I asked, you'd say no."

"I would have said yes before you finished."

"I didn't know that."

"No," he said. "How would you."

They looked at each other across the kitchen.

All those summers sat in the room, the two of them on either side of the car door, each afraid of being the one to ask.

"We were both standing in the driveway," Alana said.

"Yes."

"For seventeen years."

"Yes."

She crossed the floor.

She put her hands flat on his chest and rested her forehead against him.

"I'm not asking for anything today," she said into his shirt. "I haven't got it figured out. But I'm here. I'm not in the car."

He wrapped his arms around her.

His chin came down on her hair.

"That's enough for today," he said, and she felt it as a vow.

"Take me upstairs."

"Which room?"

"Yours." She lifted her face. "In daylight. With the door open. You said you wanted that."

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