He Came Back for Both of Us novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: Content

Felicity orders the clone video down and deletes it herself, but Lisette has made sure it's everywhere; Benji's surgery goes well, and Jameson walks in with the video playing on a nurse's phone.

Lisette crossed the waiting room in her camel trench.

She sat down next to me and squeezed my knee.

"Oh, honey," she said. "How's our boy?"

I turned my phone around so she could see her own post.

"Take it down."

She glanced at the screen and smiled.

"Fee, look at the numbers."

"I don't care about the numbers. Take it down."

"It's at a million views," she said. "In forty minutes. He's trending. The surgeon's name is trending."

"His name is Jameson Legare," I said. "He's standing on the other side of that door."

"I know exactly who he is." She tucked a strand of platinum behind her ear. "Everybody does now."

A man across the room looked up from his coffee.

I lowered my voice.

"My son is on an operating table. You filmed him through a curtain."

"I filmed a miracle."

She tapped the screen.

"Look at the comments. 'I'm sobbing.' 'Crumb found his daddy.' 'This is fate.' Two thousand people asking if he's single."

"He was in pain, Lisette."

"And now his pain pays for college."

She said it softly.

"Do you know what a brand will pay for the reunion arc? Do you know what this is worth?"

"How did you even get back there?"

"I told the desk I was family."

She had told the desk she was family.

She'd been family to me for four years.

She'd held my hair in a Nashville coffee shop when I couldn't stop throwing up.

She'd been in the room for the first ultrasound.

She'd filmed it.

"Give me your phone," I said.

She laughed.

"Fee."

I took it out of her hand.

I didn't grab. I just took it, the way I take scissors from Benji.

She was so surprised she let go.

The account was open on her screen. Of course it was. She had the login. She'd always had the login.

I found the post.

Delete.

Are you sure?

Yes.

The video vanished.

I handed her phone back.

The man with the coffee was openly staring now.

Lisette looked at her screen, then at me, and her smile didn't move at all.

"Okay," she said. "Feel better?"

"Yes."

"Good." She turned her phone toward me and scrolled.

The clone video was on someone else's page. And someone else's. And a news account with a red banner.

A stitched version with crying emojis.

A gossip page had frozen the frame on Jameson's face and written CHIEF OF SURGERY'S SECRET SON across it.

"I sent the file to six accounts before I posted," she said. "You can't delete the internet, sweetie. Nobody can."

I stared at her.

I knew this woman's coffee order. I knew her mother's birthday.

I'd never once seen her face do what it was doing now.

"Why?" I said.

"Because you'd have said no."

She stood up and smoothed her trench.

"And you'd have been wrong. I'm going to go grab us coffee. Oat milk?"

She walked away.

I sat there with my hands in my lap.

I didn't cry.

I'd done all my crying on the courthouse steps.

At 5:20, the doors swung open.

The old chief came out still in his cap, the golf shirt gone under green scrubs.

I stood up so fast my heel caught the chair leg.

"Mrs. Legare?"

"Dunagan."

"Ms. Dunagan. Sorry." He pulled the cap off. His hair was white and flattened. "It had perforated. Just before we got in."

My hand went to my mouth.

"We cleaned him out. We got all of it."

"He's going to need antibiotics and a few days here, and he's going to be sore and very annoyed with us."

"He's okay?"

"He's okay." He touched my elbow. "He came out of anesthesia asking whether his stomach was full of rocks."

I laughed, and it came out wet.

"That's him."

"Recovery will call you back in twenty minutes."

He started to turn away, then stopped.

He looked at me for a long moment.

"He has his father's chin," he said quietly.

Then he went back through the doors.

I sat down hard.

He was okay.

My whole body went loose, and I put my face in my hands and breathed.

Lisette came back with two coffees and handed me one.

I took it.

I didn't want to give her one more thing to look at.

"Good news?" she said brightly.

"He's fine."

"Oh, thank God."

She pressed a hand to her chest. Then she lifted her phone.

"Can you say that again? Just like that? People are so worried about him."

"No."

"Fee."

"If you film me right now, I'll throw this coffee."

She lowered the phone.

She smiled at me.

At 5:58, the hall doors opened again.

It wasn't recovery.

It was Jameson.

He'd changed his coat. His hair was wet, like he'd put his whole head under a faucet.

He was holding a phone with a pink case that wasn't his.

It was playing.

I could hear it from across the room. My son's croaky little voice.

Mommy, that man looks just like me.

Jameson stopped in front of me.

He didn't look at Lisette.

He turned the screen toward me. Not the clone video. My account.

Three years of my son in a grid.

Benji's first bath. Benji's first steps. Benji in a dinosaur costume at Halloween.

Two point four million followers.

"You told the internet before you told me," he said.

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