The Secret That Broke Us novel · Chapter 31 of 32

Chapter 31: Aunt June

"Ingrid," Nate said.

He said it in the lobby of the county building, with thirty dispatchers listening and the stamp still drying on Kristin's withdrawal.

"It was my grandmother's name," he said. "She raised me on weekends when my dad was gone. She kept a jar of butterscotch candies and told me I could be better than what I came from."

His mother pressed the tissue to her mouth.

"It's a good name," I said.

"I've said it to her for six weeks. In the shelter, at night. She turns her head."

I looked down at the girl, awake and calm in the sling.

"Ingrid," I said.

She turned her head toward me.

The whole floor sighed, which I had never heard thirty people do.

We held the christening on the second Sunday of December at Lena's church, the small Lutheran one on Fourth Street with the crooked steeple.

There were eleven of us.

The pastor was an old man with a cold, who had baptized Lena's husband and buried him, and who looked at the babies with an expression of professional tenderness.

I stood at the font with Anders on my arm.

Nate stood beside me with Ingrid in a white gown his mother had sewn.

It was too long, and she'd kicked one sleeve loose, and she looked like a small furious ghost.

Ben was in the second pew in his one suit with his hands folded, and Lena sat beside him, crying already.

"Who stands for this child?" the pastor said.

Nate cleared his throat.

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