Page 23 of His Daughter

I needed to go to work.

I swung my legs out of bed, pulled my hair back with one hand, reached for the phone with the other, and dialed Margot’s number.

She picked up on the second ring. "Please tell me you're not about to say what I think you're about to say."

"I'm running late. I'll be there in forty."

"Girl, sit your ass down. It's almost closing time, and it is raining like the end of the world out there."

I turned toward the window. The glass was sheeted with water, the street below blurred into gray shapes and headlights. Rain hammered the pane in gusts.

"I can make it."

"Definitely not. The roads are flooded on Eighth. Dawson called and said the underpass near the office is backed up to the bridge. I'm leaving in twenty minutes myself. Stay home, Thea. Read a book. Watch your trash TV. Do something that isn't work for one single day."

"Margot — "

"I don't want to see you here." She hung up.

I stood in my bedroom, holding the dead phone and looking at the rain. I walked to my bookshelf in the corner and pulled out a random romance novel.

It didn’t work. I couldn’t focus for more than five minutes to get immersed in it. I abandoned it and moved to the living room.

The remote sat on the coffee table. I reached over and clicked on the TV. Of course, that trashy dating show was already on. I tugged a blanket over my legs and settled in, just in time to watch a woman in a gold dress tear into a man about his emotional availability, her voice rising above the studio lights.

My brain started to quiet down. “You tell him,” I said to the screen.

Then the screen cut to a couple standing on a balcony. She was holding a baby. He had his arm around her shoulders, and the baby was reaching for his face. He was laughing. The baby's hand finally found his cheek and held on.

I reached for the remote and clicked the TV off. The screen went black, swallowing the last flash of the happy family. Then the apartment fell silent again — heavier than the noise before.

I sat there in the dark of my living room, listening to the rain pour. So this was what it felt like to be alone. Caleb and I had been together for eight years, married for six. I didn’t know how to be alone. The word wasn’t in my vocabulary.

Yet, here I was. I didn’t know what to do with myself. Maybe I…

Hnn…hnn…pff…

I stopped and turned toward the door. What was that?

Pff…pff…mmmh…nhh… mmm…

I jumped to my feet. I rushed to the window, tilted my head, and listened.

Ngh—aaah! Waaah! Waaah!

I gasped and jumped backward. My heart was threatening to beat out of my chest.

A baby. It was a baby.

I walked to the front door. My hand found the knob, and I stood there for a second, because this didn't make sense. There was no reason a baby would be crying on my porch.

I turned the knob, and there it was.

A baby, wrapped in a blanket, was tucked against the side of the doorframe where the overhang kept the worst of the rain off. Her face was red and scrunched, her mouth open, her fists clenched.

There was no one else. No car pulling away. No figure disappearing into the rain.

My hands moved before my brain did. I scooped her against my chest, one arm under her body, the other cradling her head. I brought her inside and kicked the door shut with my foot. I locked the deadbolt with my free hand.