For Our 10th Anniversary, My Husband Gave Me a Green Dress and My Sister a Baby novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: On My Mother's Lawn

Bethany begs on the porch, Graeme arrives and offers Phoebe the baby to raise, and Phoebe demands her $310,000 back. He says she signed it away.

I didn't let Bethany into my mother's house.

I stepped out onto the porch and pulled the door shut behind me.

She stood on the bottom step in her good wool coat, with mascara down both cheeks.

Under the open coat, the green satin showed.

She had not changed out of it.

"Pheebs, please," she said. "Five minutes."

"You have two."

She wiped her face with the back of her hand.

"He told me you already knew. He said you two had talked about it and you were fine, and the party was just a formality."

"And you believed that."

"I wanted to," she said. "I've wanted a family since Mom died. You know that."

I did know it.

Bethany's mother had died the winter before last, and I had driven to Cleveland for the funeral, and I had stood beside my half-sister at the grave because my father couldn't stop crying long enough to hold her up.

That was why this hurt so badly.

"When did it start?" I asked.

"March."

"March of this year."

"It wasn't supposed to turn into anything," Bethany said. "It was after the spring sale, and everybody went out, and you went home with your migraine."

I remembered the migraine.

I remembered that Graeme had texted me at midnight to ask if I needed anything.

"Why are you wearing it?" I said. "You know what that color is to my family."

"He picked it. He said you'd get it sooner if we wore the same one."

"Get what?"

She stared at me.

"That it's going to be okay," she said. "That we could all live together. He wants you to stay, Phoebe. He wants you to be the baby's mother. I'd be in the guesthouse, and nobody would ever have to say that part out loud."

She said it in a small hopeful voice.

I thought, she actually thinks I might say yes.

"Do you need something from me?" I asked.

Her eyes jumped away from mine.

"I was going to ask about the rent," she said. "On the apartment. I lost the lease for next month, because Graeme said he'd handle it, and then he didn't."

"Go home, Bethany."

"I don't have a home. I have the guesthouse."

"You have a father who loves you very much," I said. "Go and sit in his house tonight."

"Phoebe."

"You stood in my living room in a dress that was a joke about my mother, and you cried so everybody would look at you and not at me."

Her face went blank.

Then a pair of headlights swung onto the street, and a car pulled up crooked behind hers.

Graeme got out.

He was still in his blazer, but he had loosened his tie.

My mother's neighbors had porch lights on up and down the block, and a curtain moved in the house across the way.

He walked up the path with both hands open at his sides.

"Bethany, get in the car," he said. "I'm taking you home."

"She isn't going anywhere with you," I said.

"Phoebe." He used the warm voice, the one I'd trusted for ten years. "It's two in the morning. Come home and let's sort this out in our own house."

"No."

"We've been married ten years. We have a life. I'm not going to throw it away over a mistake I'm sorry for."

"Which one?" I said. "The dress or the baby?"

His jaw tightened, and then he smoothed it away.

"Here's what I see," Graeme said. "You've wanted a child since you were thirty. I could never give you one, and now there's a way. It's still my baby, it's still our family. Bethany lives in the guesthouse, and you raise the child as yours. Everyone's happy."

The curtain across the street moved again.

My mother had opened the front door behind me.

"He just said that out loud," my mother said. "On my lawn."

Graeme didn't look at her.

"You said you could never give me one," I said slowly. "You said that, Graeme."

"It's a figure of speech."

"The doctors said it was my side. That's what you told me for six years."

"And it was probably your side," he said. "That's why this is a gift. For you."

I stood very still.

I thought of every injection I had given myself in the bathroom and every cheerful nurse in a waiting room with a plant in the window.

Four rounds, and every dollar of it mine.

"I want my money," I said.

"Which money?"

"The three hundred and ten thousand dollars from my grandmother's farm that built your company. I want it back, all of it. By Friday."

Graeme laughed.

It was a short easy laugh, and Bethany flinched when she heard it.

"Phoebe, that was company capital," he said. "You can't take it back. It's gone into ten years of inventory and four showrooms."

Then he reached out and took my hand off the railing, gently.

"You signed the papers yourself."

← Chapter 2 · All chapters · Chapter 4 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend