The Baby Couldn't Tie Him, The Lie Did novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: Our CEO and His Wife

At Northlight, Valerie meets Mitchell's mother, who offers two million dollars for her baby, and the agreement already carries Mitchell's signature.

I didn't sleep.

At three in the morning the tablet lit up again.

"Your mother says the papers are ready. Don't let her stall."

At five, one more.

"Love you. Come home soon."

He didn't come back.

At eight I put on my gray coat, the only one that still closed over my belly, and took a cab to the Wharf.

Northlight had the top floor of a glass building by the ferry dock.

I had never been inside.

Five years I'd worked for that company. I wrote the engine that told every crane in Silverport harbor which ship to unload first.

I did it from our kitchen table.

"The Thorntons can't know about you yet," Mitchell always said. "They'd use you to get to me."

The receptionist had a sleek ponytail and a headset.

"Can I help you?"

"I'm here to see Mitchell Thornton."

"Do you have an appointment?"

"Tell him Valerie's here."

She typed. She frowned at her screen.

"I don't have a Valerie on his list. Are you with a vendor?"

"I'm with him."

She gave me a small, careful smile. The kind you give people who talk to themselves on buses.

Behind her was a long white wall covered in framed photos.

The launch party. The ribbon cutting at the port. The team in matching blue shirts.

And in the center, the biggest frame.

Mitchell in a dark suit, Blair on his arm in white lace, both of them laughing.

Under it, a brass plate.

"Our CEO and his wife."

My mother's forty thousand dollars had paid for the first desks in this building.

Almost forty. Thirty-eight thousand, from thirty years of scrubbing floors.

I was still looking at the photo when the office door behind the desk opened.

A woman stood there leaning on a black cane.

Silver hair in a knot at the back of her neck. A camel coat she hadn't bothered to take off.

"You must be Valerie," she said. "Come in. I've been waiting."

The receptionist looked between us and went very pale.

Mitchell's office had a glass wall that looked out over the harbor.

He wasn't in it.

The woman sat behind his desk.

"Virginia Thornton," she said. "Mitchell's mother. Sit down. You look like you're going to fall over."

"I'll stand."

"Suit yourself."

She looked at my stomach for a long time. Not at my face. At my stomach.

"Is it a boy?"

"Where's Mitchell?"

"With his wife. Where he should be." She tapped the desk. "Is it a boy?"

"It's a girl."

A little tightening at the corner of her mouth.

"Well. That can't be helped."

She pulled a folder out of the drawer and slid it across the desk.

"I'll be quick, because I don't like to waste anybody's time. Blair can't have children. Not easily. The doctors have been very clear."

"I'm sorry for her."

"Don't be. It's been solved." She opened the folder. "Your baby is a Thornton. She'll be raised as one. By Mitchell and his wife, in our house, with our name."

I laughed.

I didn't mean to. It came out of me.

"You're out of your mind."

"Two million dollars," Virginia said. "Wired the day she's born. You leave Silverport. You don't come back. You never contact her."

She turned the page.

"Your mother's debts go away. I know about the car loan and the dentist. You'll both be comfortable for the rest of your lives."

"She's my daughter."

"She's Mitchell's daughter. And you have nothing." She said it without any heat at all. "No marriage. No job on paper. No home in your name. Your mother has an assault on record as of yesterday."

"The charges were dropped."

"Charges can be refiled. Blair's very forgiving. That can change."

I put my hand on my belly.

The baby kicked. Hard, right against my palm.

"Get out of my way," I said. "I'm leaving."

"You haven't read the last page."

"I don't need to."

"You do, dear. It concerns you."

She turned the folder around to face me and flipped to the end.

It was the signature page.

Two lines.

The top line was blank. My name was typed under it.

The bottom line was already signed.

I knew that signature. I'd watched him practice it at twenty-three, when he was trying to make it look like a CEO's.

The J with the long tail. The loop in the E.

Mitchell Thornton.

Dated Monday.

Two days before the police station.

Two days before he knelt in front of me and put his hands on my belly and said I was his real wife.

"He signed it Monday," Virginia said. "Over lunch. He didn't even ask for a pen of his own."

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