Chapter 19: A Name for Him

Ward's POV

The ship was tied up at the Muskegon pier for a refit, and I drove out there the morning after the hearing.

It was the first time in six years I'd stood on that gangway in a clean shirt with no bag.

The chief engineer was in the control room with a coffee and a clipboard.

"Delaney," he said. "I heard you were ashore for good."

"I am."

"The shore job?"

"I called Fleet Ops at nine. I start Monday."

He looked at me for a while.

"Your pay drops by a third."

"I know."

"You'll be bored inside two months."

"I've got a son," I said. "I'll find something to do."

He put out his hand, and I shook it.

"Go see the crew," he said. "They've been sick about it since the photo."

They were in the mess, eight of them, and nobody spoke when I came through the door.

The oiler who'd texted me at four in the morning on the day Corrine's husband walked out of her surgery, stood up.

"I didn't know whether to send it," he said. "I sat on it an hour."

"You sent it."

"Was I wrong?"

"No."

I put my hand on his shoulder.

"You're the reason I wasn't the last to know," I said. "I'm not coming back, boys. I wanted to say it to your faces."

The oiler's eyes were wet, and he looked at the table.

"Took you long enough," somebody said from the back, and the room laughed.

I drove back to Port Alden with the window down.

Summer's mother was waiting in the parking lot of the Lakeview Motor Inn.

She stood beside her car with the baby carrier at her feet and a folded paper in her hand.

Keep reading free with an account. Start My Husband Left Me in Labor for My Best Friend and Her Baby from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.