Chapter 13: Her Version

Kendra was already sitting on the edge of Vaughn's bed.

He lay propped on two pillows in the observation ward, gray in the face, with a line taped to the back of his hand.

She held his other hand in both of hers, and she was crying.

I stopped in the doorway.

"Geneva," she said, and wiped her cheek with her thumb. "Thank God. I was just telling him."

"Telling him what?"

"That you ambushed me in the hallway."

Vaughn turned his head on the pillow.

His eyes were slow from the anesthesia, but they found me and stayed.

"She said terrible things," Kendra told him. "She said I took some letter and stamped it. She said I burned a photograph in your sink."

"Vaughn," I said.

"I don't even know what letter she means."

"She told me herself," I said. "In the corridor upstairs. She said she stamped REFUSED on my envelope and burned the ultrasound."

"Do you hear her?" Kendra's voice cracked. "She's saying this on the day you gave your bone to her son."

"My son and yours," Vaughn said, very quietly.

Kendra flinched.

"Of course. I only mean she's exhausted. She's been under such strain."

"She told me you'd be hers by Christmas," Kendra said. "She said you'd forgive her anything."

I stared at her.

Those were her words, turned around and handed back to me.

"You said that to me," I said. "About yourself."

"Why would I say a thing like that?" She pressed her palm to her chest.

"I came here to bring him soup."

A paper bag sat on the tray table beside a carton of chicken broth.

Keep reading free with an account. Start He Left Me Pregnant at Her Funeral, Now His Son Needs Him from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.