The Choices We Made novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Cake and Knives

In her mother's empty house Eliza records Gretchen bragging, then Gretchen tears her own sleeve and screams. Weston arrives, hears the tape, and asks what she meant by: I gave you a son.

Eliza's mother's house in Harlow Falls had been empty for four years.

The pipes knocked. The kitchen smelled of dust and old coffee.

She put the kettle on, because it was the only thing her hands knew how to do.

On the second morning, a courier brought a letter from a lawyer's office in the city.

Weston's lawyer wrote that Albie would stay at Schermerhorn Hall. Mrs. Schermerhorn might visit him on Sundays, for two hours, with a member of staff present.

She read it standing at the sink.

Then she opened the voice recorder on her phone.

One night had taught her that nobody in that house would believe her without proof.

At noon a white car stopped outside the gate.

Gretchen Kittredge stepped out in a cream coat, carrying a cake box tied with ribbon.

Eliza left the recorder running, slid the phone under a dish towel on the counter, and opened the door.

"Eliza." Gretchen smiled. "May I come in? I think we should talk, woman to woman."

"Say it on the porch."

"It's cold."

"Then say it fast."

Gretchen stepped past her anyway.

She set the box on the kitchen table and looked around at the cracked linoleum and the chipped cups.

"So this is where you come from," she said. "I always wondered."

Eliza said nothing.

"You made a scene, you know. Constance was white. She's still furious."

"Good."

Gretchen laughed under her breath. The warm look slid off her face, and the face under it was calm and bored.

"You really thought they'd take your side," she said. "Weston signs whatever I put in front of him. He always has."

"I know. I saw my own name in his handwriting."

"Then you know how this ends. You leave. I stay. Albie calls me Mommy by the end of the year, and he already does when you're not in the room."

Eliza's hand closed around the back of a chair.

"Why do you want him so much?"

"Because you never deserved him." Gretchen's voice dropped. "A nurse from a mill town. Constance chose who to keep, Eliza. She chose me. I gave you a son and you never once said thank you."

Eliza stared at her.

"You gave me a son."

"I found you a son," Gretchen said, and for the first time her eyes flickered. "The agency. The papers. Everything. I did all of it."

She picked up the cake knife and turned it over in her hand.

Then she looked at the window.

Headlights swept the glass. A black car came up the lane too fast and stopped behind hers.

Gretchen's face changed.

She dragged the knife across her own sleeve and tore the cream wool open. She swept the cake box off the table so it hit the floor, and she screamed.

"Eliza, don't! Please, I only came to apologize!"

The door banged open.

Weston stood in it, breathing hard, in the dark suit he must have worn from his office.

Gretchen ran to him with the cut sleeve held out and tears pouring down her face.

"She attacked me, Wes. I brought her a cake, and she threw it at me, and she took the knife."

Weston looked at the torn sleeve.

He looked at the cake on the floor, and at the knife on the table, still clean.

Then he looked at Eliza, who hadn't moved from the counter.

"Is it true?" he said.

"Do you want to know, or do you want to be told?"

His jaw tightened.

Eliza reached under the dish towel, took out her phone, and pressed play.

Gretchen's voice filled the small kitchen. Weston signs whatever I put in front of him.

Gretchen stopped crying.

Constance chose who to keep. She chose me.

"Turn it off," Gretchen whispered.

"Let it finish," Weston said.

His voice was quiet. Eliza had never heard him sound like that.

The recording ran on to the end.

I gave you a son and you never once said thank you.

Eliza pressed stop.

Nobody spoke.

Weston stood very still, and his face had gone blank in a way Eliza had not seen in six years of marriage.

"Gave," he said.

He looked at Gretchen.

"What do you mean, gave?"

"The agency, Wes." Gretchen's voice came out fast and thin. "I found the agency for you. After the baby. I told you."

He kept looking at her.

Then he nodded.

Eliza watched the nod. It came a half second too late.

He had not been told that.

Nobody in this house had told him anything.

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