At 34 Weeks Pregnant, I Found My Husband Kissing Her in Our Baby's Nursery novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: What His Mother Said

I did not let Russell in.

I stepped out onto Tamara's porch in my socks, pulled the door shut behind me, and stood with my back against it.

It was thirty-eight degrees, and he had no coat.

"Give me the notebook," I said.

He held it out with both hands.

The green cover had a water stain on one corner that I didn't remember, and there was a crease down the spine where someone had bent it open too far.

I took it, and I held it against my chest, and I didn't open it.

"You said you had something to tell me," I said. "You've got until the porch light goes off."

It was on a timer.

I didn't tell him that.

"I woke up at six," he said. "At her place. I turned my phone on, and there were nine missed calls from you and four from my mother."

"I know how many."

"I drove straight to the hospital. My mother was already in the parking garage. She'd been there since four, because the hospital called her when they couldn't reach me."

I said nothing.

"She got into my car. She said, 'Where were you?' And I told her."

He wiped his face with his sleeve.

"She wasn't angry, Becky. That's what I can't stop seeing. She was calm. She said, 'Your phone died at the office. You were working late on the Kalamazoo account, and you didn't hear it. You will say that, and you will say nothing else, to anyone, ever.'"

The wind moved the dead leaves along the porch boards.

"She said a woman who has lost a child leaves a man who wasn't there. She said that you would take the baby and the house and go. She told me to keep you, and keep quiet."

"And you did what she said."

"I did what she said every day for four years."

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