Page 207 of Show Me

My throat closes. “How could I not be? She died giving birth to me.”

Dad exhales slowly. “Ruby, there’s something I should’ve explained better a long time ago. Your mom hemorrhaged after you were born. They took her into surgery, and during it, the hospital lost power. The backup generator failed. They had to transfer her.” His voice roughens. “By the time they got her somewhere else, it was too late.”

All my life, the story has been simple. Mom had me. Mom died. Those two things fused until pregnancy and death became tangled in my head.

“There was a blackout?”

“And a catastrophic equipment failure. Your mother didn’t die because she had you.”

Emotion burns behind my eyes again.

“That exact chain of failures is extraordinarily unlikely now,” he says. “Hospitals have redundancies they didn’t have then.”

I swallow. “You never told me.”

“I thought you understood what happened.” Regret crosses his face. “Apparently, I was wrong.”

I reach across the table and take his hand. He squeezes mine before sitting back.

“The father is Xavier.” Not a question.

“Yes.”

“You told him?”

“Not yet.”

Dad sighs. “Why?”

“Because he already feels responsible for everything that’s happened to me. If I tell him now, I won’t know if he’s staying because he wants me or because he thinks he has to.”

Dad studies me. “You love him.”

There isn’t much point denying it anymore. “Yes.”

He nods like I’ve confirmed something he figured out years ago.

“What?”

“You’ve looked at that boy like he was the moon and the stars since high school.”

“Dad.”

“What?” His eyes widen as he shakes his head. “I’m old, not blind.”

A startled laugh escapes me. Dad smiles and squeezes my hand again. And for the first time since the doctor said I was pregnant, I feel like I can breathe.

Chapter One Hundred Nine

Xavier

The Next Morning

The first thing I notice when I pull into Ruby’s driveway is the stillness. Her car is there, but no one else’s vehicles take up space in the driveway. Jake said the hospital released her hours ago. So where the hell is she?

I kill the engine and scan the property. Tree line. Pig pen. Nothing moves. My pulse kicks harder as the possibility of her being here alone, again, makes me see red. I can’t believe they’d let her return home on her own.

Squirt grunts from the pen. Fuck. My shoulders slump as if a weighted blanket dropped on top of me. Ruby’s definitely not here. If she were, Squirt would be inside. Thank fuck. But that still leaves the question of where in the hell she is unanswered.