Chapter 7
Brenda’s mother called the next morning.
Then her brother.
Then her church friend.
They all said the same thing in different voices.
“She made a mistake.”
“She’s hormonal.”
“She loves Emily deep down.”
“She’s pregnant, Robert. Think of the baby.”
Dad put every call on speaker for Aunt Laura to hear.
After the fourth one, Aunt Laura took the phone.
“This is Laura. The next person who excuses locking a child in a dog kennel gets added to the police report as harassment.”
No one called for two hours.
It was peaceful.
Then Dad’s phone buzzed.
A text from Brenda.
A photo.
The ultrasound.
Under it, she wrote:
Choose carefully.
Dad stared at the screen for a long time.
I sat at Aunt Laura’s kitchen table eating pancakes I could barely taste.
I watched his face and felt fear crawl back into my throat.
A baby changes everything.
Adults always said that.
Would the baby change me out of the family?
Would Dad forgive Brenda?
Would I have to go back?
Dad looked up and saw me watching.
He came to the table.
He knelt.
“Emily, listen to me.”
I stared at the syrup bottle.
“Sweetheart.”
I looked at him.
“The baby is innocent. But Brenda is not. I will protect that child too, if the child is mine. But I will never put you back in danger.”
“If?”
The word slipped out.
Dad’s face changed.
Aunt Laura stopped moving at the stove.
Dad looked down at his phone again.
“What do you mean, if?”
I swallowed hard.
“Brenda talks on the phone sometimes.”
Aunt Laura slowly turned.
“What does she say?”
I twisted my fingers.
“She said when Dad finds out, he’ll be too trapped to leave.”
Dad went still.
“She said that?”
I nodded.
“And once she said… she hoped the baby looked like Mark.”
Aunt Laura whispered, “Who is Mark?”
I looked at Dad.
His face had gone pale.
May you like
“Our neighbor,” he said.
“The one who helped fix the fence.”
