15 Days Before I Left Him novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Ten Weeks
A nurse congratulates Roscoe on the baby while Clara holds his coat, and his mother thanks her for agreeing to something she never agreed to.
Fifteen days before our wedding, a nurse congratulated my fiancé on his baby while I stood next to him holding his coat.
"Ten weeks," she said, reading her tablet. "The heartbeat is strong. You can go in, Dad."
Roscoe didn't move.
An hour earlier he had called me at school and said his first love had fainted at the pharmacy.
"She's alone, Clara. Five minutes, I'll make sure she's okay."
I had said, "I'll come with you."
In the car he told me it was dehydration from her treatment, nothing serious, and that I didn't need to worry about any of it.
Now I stood in a hospital corridor and did the math.
Five weeks ago Roscoe first asked me to let him give her a child.
I said no that night, and I said no every night after.
The baby was ten weeks old.
"Clara," Roscoe said. "Let me explain."
"You were asking me for permission to do something already done."
"It was a clinic. Nobody touched anybody." He kept his voice low and glanced at the nurse. "She doesn't have time to wait for a yes you weren't going to give."
The nurse found something to do at the far end of the hall.
I handed him his coat, because that was what my hands were doing.
He took it and said, "Come in with me. Please. She'd want you there."
Faye was propped up in the bed with a thin blanket over her knees and a green scarf covering her bare head.
She was twenty-eight, the same as us, and she looked younger and more tired than anyone I knew.
"Clara." She smiled at me with her whole face. "You came. You didn't have to do that."
"You fainted," I said. "Of course I came."
"I wanted to tell you myself. I kept trying to find the right way." Her hand went to the silver medal on the chain at her neck. "Roscoe said you'd come around."
Roscoe stepped up beside the bed and rested two fingers on the medal.
"She pulled me out of Hollis Pond when we were eleven," he said, to nobody in particular. "I wouldn't be here."
Everyone in our town knew that story.
I rubbed my thumb across the scar on my right palm.
I told people a fence did it.
"I know," I said.
The door swung open and Judith came in with a shopping bag in each hand.
Roscoe's mother was fifty-eight, silver-haired, in a camel coat and pearls, and she had been kind to me since I was nine years old.
She kissed Faye's forehead first, then crossed the room and wrapped both arms around me.
"There she is," Judith said into my hair. "I came the second Roscoe texted."
She let go and pulled a small yellow cardigan out of the bag.
It was hand-knit, no bigger than my two hands side by side.
"I started it in August," she said. "I couldn't help myself."
August was before Roscoe had asked me anything.
I looked at the cardigan, and then I looked at Roscoe.
He was studying the floor tiles.
"And I want you to know how much it means," Judith said, squeezing my arm. "We were all so relieved when you finally said yes, sweetheart."
Nobody in the room spoke.
"When did I say yes?" I asked.
Judith's smile stayed exactly where it was.
"Roscoe told us in July. That you'd given your blessing. That you were the one who encouraged him."
July.
Two months before he ever brought it up with me.
I had told Roscoe no for five weeks, out loud, in our kitchen, and he had gone to his mother and told her I said yes.
Faye looked from him to me, and the color left her face.
"Roscoe," she said quietly. "You told me she knew."
"Clara knows," Roscoe said fast. "She's just surprised. Right, Clara?"
All three of them were looking at me.
I could have said it there, in front of a sick woman and a mother holding a baby sweater.
I could have thrown the ring on the blanket.
Instead I put my hands in my coat pockets and said, "Congratulations, Faye."
Faye's eyes filled.
"Thank you," she whispered. "Truly."
I walked out first, and Roscoe caught up with me at the elevator.
"Thank you for not making a scene," he said. "I know it's a lot. But nothing changes. We get married on the seventeenth, exactly like we planned."
"Okay," I said.
He kissed my temple, relieved, and I let him.
In the elevator I made my decision, and it was one plain sentence.
I would not be at that altar.
His phone buzzed in his hand as the doors closed, and I saw the preview before he flipped it over.
It was from the lodge where we were getting married.
It said: Seating confirmed. Ms. Brightwell, head table, beside the groom.
I didn't say a word.
I had fifteen days to leave quietly.
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