The Baby Couldn't Tie Him, The Lie Did novel · Chapter 24 of 32

Chapter 24: The Drawer

I didn't play it in the elevator.

I didn't play it in the pediatrician's office, where my daughter was weighed and measured and pronounced perfect at five pounds, four ounces.

I held my phone in my lap the whole way home with my thumb over the screen.

At Pike Street my mother carried the stroller up the stairs by herself and wouldn't let me help.

I called Nathan.

"Come over," I said. "Now. Don't ask."

We sat at my mother's little table. The baby was asleep in the bassinet under the boats.

My mother turned off the radio.

Downstairs, the dryers had stopped.

I set the phone in the middle of the table and pressed play.

At first there was only noise.

Cloth rubbing against the microphone. Footsteps on a hard floor. China clinking on a tray.

Then a door, and voices, and the sound got clearer.

"...every one of them walked out," Blair was saying. "Thirty women, Virginia. I'll never be invited anywhere again."

"You'll be invited wherever I tell them to invite you."

Virginia's voice. Cool and dry and very close.

My mother's hand went flat on the table.

"You said nobody would ever look under the mat," Blair said.

"Nobody would have, if my son had kept that girl in the apartment where she belonged."

A cup set down on a saucer.

"Sit down. You're making me tired."

A chair creaked.

"He knows," Blair said, lower. "About the pregnancy. He's known since February. He found the insurance thing."

"I'm aware."

"You're aware? And you didn't tell me?"

"He came to me the same week." Virginia sounded almost bored. "He wanted to know what it would cost him to leave you. I told him. Thirty percent and the Pendry contract. He went back to his office and never raised it again."

A small laugh.

"That's my son. He'll always choose the contract. It's the only thing I ever taught him that stuck."

Nathan had gone very still beside me.

"What if he starts asking about the gala night?" Blair said.

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