Chapter 8: Storm

"What did you say?" Nils asked again.

"You told the whole road she's carrying your baby," Anders said. "I only asked which baby you meant. You've got two."

Nils opened his mouth.

He closed it.

Across the road, a neighbor's screen door clapped shut.

"Don't twist things," Nils said. "You've been gone three months."

"I know."

"Come on, Nils," said Birgit, and took his arm. "We aren't doing this in front of people."

She turned back to me on the path, and her voice dropped to something almost kind.

"You've made a very ugly week," she said. "I want you to know I'll remember it."

"I'll remember it too," I said.

They left in their two cars.

The neighbors went inside one by one.

When the lane was empty, I discovered my hand was still tight around the folded deed.

"I should go," said Anders.

"Yes," I said.

The wind had picked up.

The first October storm was coming across the lake, and by the time Pia's truck turned out of the lane it was raining sideways.

She had a shift. She'd made me promise to lock the door and text her.

I locked it.

At nine, a branch the size of a man's leg came down across the hood of the green pickup.

I heard it from the kitchen, a crack and then a long groan of metal.

The lights went out.

I found a flashlight in the drawer where Gran had always kept one, and opened the blue door.

Anders was standing in the rain beside his truck.

The windshield had split into a white web.

"I'm fine," he called. "It's only glass."

"You can't drive that to Thunder Bay."

Keep reading free with an account. Start My Husband Made Me Take a DNA Test While I Was Pregnant With His Baby from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.