Pretty Baby novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: The Stairwell

My mother opened the door before I knocked.

She hadn't slept either.

Her robe was wrinkled and her mascara was a day old.

Her hands twisted around each other as if she'd waited there since I left.

"I'll tell you everything," Bernadette said. "Just don't say it like that again. Don't say I sold her."

"I'll say it however I want. Who's the father?"

She flinched.

"I never knew," I said. "I told you he was a man at a banquet. I told you I never learned his name."

"I know."

"Mrs. Hartwell asked me that, in front of her whole board, and I couldn't answer."

My mother sat on the arm of the couch.

"She came to my kitchen six years ago," she said. "She had a folder."

"She knew your name and the day you were due. She'd had the hotel's staff logs pulled."

"What hotel?"

"The Lakeshore. The Hartwell Freight dinner, the night of the storm."

"You worked the banquet and came home with your shoes in your hand."

I remembered the shoes.

I remembered the whole night, suddenly, as if somebody had turned a light on in a room I'd locked.

The storm had cut the power at ten.

I was nineteen, carrying a tray of cold champagne down a service stairwell, and the dark came down.

Somebody on the landing below laughed.

It was a low, tired laugh, and a flashlight beam hit my feet.

"Is that a tray of champagne?" a man said. "If you're a ghost, I'll take two."

"I'm a waitress," I said. "You're not supposed to be in here."

"Neither are you. Come sit. Nothing's going anywhere until they find the generator."

Keep reading free with an account. Start Pretty Baby from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.