On Our Fifth Anniversary, My Husband's Ex Got the Honeymoon Suite I Booked novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Her Own Door

At home Hannah puts Ethan's suitcases in the hall and finds hotel receipts from March and August; Ethan arrives with roses and says his mother is coming too.

By Saturday night, Ethan's suitcases were in the hallway outside my front door.

There were two of them, and a garment bag, and a clear plastic box of his ties.

Macy held the box up to the light.

"Forty-one ties," she said. "Who needs forty-one ties?"

"A man who irons them."

"I always hated that he irons them."

My sister is twenty-six, with short red hair and a nose stud, and she had driven to O'Hare in her pajama pants to pick me up.

She hadn't asked me one question in the car.

She had just turned up the radio and driven.

The condo had been my grandmother's, and the deed said Hannah Audley and nobody else.

Ethan had moved in on our wedding day, with one duffel bag and a very sincere speech about how little he needed.

I stood in the doorway with a trash bag in my hand and found I couldn't make myself throw out the tie rack.

"I'll do it," Macy said. "Go sit."

"I'm fine."

"You're gray. Sit down and drink the ginger ale."

I sat on the arm of the couch and drank the ginger ale.

My hand went to my stomach by itself, and I moved it away.

I hadn't told Macy yet.

I hadn't told anyone.

I wanted to be the one to say it first, out loud, to someone who deserved to hear it.

Macy came back from the study with her arms full of paper.

"There's a folder in his desk drawer," she said. "It says Receipts."

"It always says Receipts."

"It has two resort folios in it. March and August."

I took them.

Halcyon Island Resort, room 520, March 14 through March 17.

Halcyon Island Resort, room 520, August 22 through August 25.

Two guests on each.

I had worked doubles at the clinic on both of those weekends, covering for a girl who had a new baby.

He had told me the company was sending him to Charleston.

"Hannah," Macy said carefully.

"I'm all right."

"You're holding it upside down."

I turned it over.

I put them back in the folder and set the folder on the coffee table where I could see it.

At 6 p.m. on Sunday, someone rang the bell.

Macy was on the couch with her laptop.

She looked at me and I looked at the door.

"Don't open it," she said.

"It's my door."

I opened it.

Ethan stood in the hall, in his navy coat, with a dozen white roses and a paper bag from my favorite bakery.

His eyes were red around the edges.

He had always been good at that.

"Hannah," he said. "Can I please come in?"

"Your suitcases are right there."

"I saw." He looked at them, then at me. "Okay. I get it. You have every right to be furious."

"I'm not furious."

"You're being very calm."

"I know."

He took half a step, and I didn't move out of the way.

"Hannah, listen to me. Quinn's ex is not a stable man. She was terrified. She called me from the airport crying, and I couldn't leave her alone in a hotel, I just couldn't. It was the right thing to do and the wrong way to do it."

"You put her in my room."

"I should have told you."

"You added her to my reservation on Monday."

He blinked.

For half a second, he didn't have a line ready.

Then he smiled at me.

"I was trying to take care of everyone," he said. "That's all I ever do, Han."

Macy said, from the couch, "That sounds exhausting."

Ethan didn't look at her.

He held out the bakery bag.

"I brought the ginger scones. You've been so green in the mornings lately. I worry about you."

I stared at the bag.

I had been sick every morning for three weeks, and I had hidden it in the bathroom with the fan on.

He had never once said a word about it.

Not at breakfast, not in bed, not on the phone.

Now he had brought ginger.

My skin went cold, all the way to the wrists.

"I'm fine," I said.

"Good." He held the roses out again. "Let me come in, Han. Please. Mom's on her way too. We'll sort this out as a family."

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