Like Dandelion Dust by Karen Kingsbury Read Free Book Online Page B

got your tongue?”
    Wendy pressed her fists against her middle. Anything to ease the tightness there. “A few weeks after you left, I was late.” She looked at him, waiting for him to understand.
    “Late?” Rip slapped a forkful of eggs onto his toast, folded it over, and shoved half of it into his mouth. “Late for what?”
    “Rip . . .” Her tone sounded painful now. He wasn’t making this any easier. “My period was late.”
    Rip kept chewing, but his motions grew slower. “Meaning what?”
    “Well . . .” She exhaled hard and covered her face with her hands. When she looked up, she shook her head. How could she have waited this long to tell him? “I took a test. . . . I was pregnant.”
    For a moment, time seemed to stop. Rip stared at her, unblinking. “What?”
    “I was pregnant, Rip.” She lifted her hands and let them fall to the table. “You got me pregnant right before you left. I had a baby boy.” Her voice fell off. “Eight months later.”
    “A boy?” Again Rip released a sound that was part laugh, part confusion. “You’re keeping a kid from me?” He glanced around the kitchen and peered beneath the table. “So where is he?”
    Wendy moaned. Her head fell back a few inches.
You can do this. . . . Finish, already.
She looked at Rip. “I gave him up. To a family in Florida.”
    Rip dropped his piece of toast. The eggs that had balanced there splattered to the floor. “You
what
?”
    The linoleum felt like liquid beneath her feet. “I . . . I gave him up, Rip.” She raised her voice without meaning to. “What was I supposed to do?”
    “Wait . . .” He pushed his chair back. For a moment he didn’t move or breathe or speak. “You gave away . . .” His tone fell to a whisper, “You gave away my . . .
son
?”
    “Rip!” Like a lead blanket, fear draped itself over Wendy and made it almost impossible to breathe. The rage was coming, she was sure of it. Like a barrage of bullets, like an air raid, he was about to unleash his anger, and this time maybe she wouldn’t survive. She stood and took small steps backwards. “I had no choice! You were in prison and I—”
    “Stop.” He held up a single hand. This was the moment when he would normally explode, only instead of rage, his eyes held a strange mix of shock and anger and fear. He stared at his plate of half-eaten eggs and toast as if he were trying to put together pieces of a puzzle that wouldn’t quite take shape. After a long time, he looked up, his eyes narrow. “Shouldn’t I have signed something?” His words were quick and clipped, like the ticking of a time bomb. “Don’t both parents have to sign when you give a kid away?”
    Wendy took another few steps back until she hit the wall. She opened her mouth but no words came. This was the hardest part, the worst of it. She had to tell the truth, or Rip would find out for himself and then . . . then she’d never come out alive. She twisted her fingers together and looked down somewhere near her feet.
Why did I ever think I could pull this off?
She lifted her eyes to his. “I . . . I signed both our names.”
    The statement was like a lit fuse, and all at once Rip was on his feet. “You can’t be serious.” He took quick, menacing steps toward her, his eyes dark and flinty. He was a foot from her now. She could see the greasy toast crumbs on his lip. When he spoke again, his words came through clenched teeth. “You signed my name? So you could give my son to some family . . . in
Florida
?”
    She nodded fast. “Yes, Rip.” With every sentence he sounded angrier, more incredulous. Coffee percolated in the background, but the smell was too strong. It made her sick to her stomach. “I had no choice.”
    “That’s it . . .” He raised his fist and she could feel it, feel his knuckles crashing down on her skull, feel herself being knocked to the floor. Except the blow never came. Instead he turned just enough and his fist smashed clean through the wall beside