Chapter 10: Whose Baby

Birdie locked the front door and turned the sign to CLOSED.

She put Delaney in the back booth with a cup of tea and a plate of toast.

Delaney didn't touch either one.

I sat across from her.

Jesse stood at the end of the booth with his arms folded.

Birdie leaned on the pie case and kept her eyes on the window.

"Start from the beginning," I said.

Delaney pulled her coat around her stomach.

"Last winter, Dutch came to my house.

"He said he'd been watching me do the books. He said I was a smart girl who deserved a better life."

"Meaning what?"

"Meaning he wanted me to keep his other set of books, and keep it quiet." Her voice was thin.

"My mother's care costs four thousand dollars a month. Dutch has been paying it since her stroke."

"I never asked him to. He just did."

I remembered the hospital waiting room.

I remembered the man in the gray beard who had been there before me, sitting in the plastic chair with his hat in his hands.

"He kept me because I owed him," Delaney said. "And in April, he took what he thought he was owed."

Nobody in the diner moved.

"I said no," she said. "I said no, and he said I'd be the one who lost my mother's bed."

I felt every muscle in my body go tight.

Jesse's arms came unfolded.

His hands were closed into fists at his sides.

"Delaney," Birdie said, very softly.

"I found out in June. I thought I'd die." She laughed, a short, awful sound.

"Dutch's wife is the heart of that club. Her auxiliary is the only reason those men are allowed in the Fourth of July parade."

Keep reading free with an account. Start My Biker Husband Spent the Night in the Other Woman's Bed from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.