Chapter Nine

Chapter Nine

Elijah

Two days later, the following Monday, not that I was stalking around or anything, Hadley’s car was in the parking lot when I headed out for work.

So she left with Lucy and came home with an extra one…

I didn’t want to admit it, but I thought about them enough to wonder if everything turned out okay.

That was some scary shit. For a moment or two, I thought she was going to have the baby in the car. With all of her screaming and crying bloody murder, I was glad she didn’t. She would have scarred both of us. I couldn’t just walk away, though, after knowing her water had broken, and the shitty part of it all was I knew she wouldn’t have asked for my help.

Ma would have kicked my ass if she knew I’d abandoned a woman in need. Honestly, my mother would kick it over a lot of the shit I did.

That was the reason I kept thinking about the two of them… I guessed it was three now?

Maybe I’d ask her how giving birth and all that went when I saw her again.

_____

Turned out, not seeing them would be the new way things would go for weeks. I went from seeing them almost every night to not seeing them at all. I saw her car in the lot every evening, and sometimes it was gone in the mornings. Maybe she had a new shift, or maybe she was on maternity leave.

How long did that last?

And what the fuck was wrong with me?

After the fourth week of not seeing them, I told myself to stop looking for them. Just stop, man, stop.

I supposed this was what we both wanted. It definitely was what Hadley wanted—not to see me again. Good riddance was what I should say. Not to have to hold my tongue around the kid again.

So, what did I do? I returned to normal.

Not that I was ever not normal.