I Hid Your Triplets, Why Did They Crash Your Engagement novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Mags

Daphne cries in Margot's kitchen and offers to talk Rafe's mother down; Rafe's mother files for emergency custody.

Daphne didn't wait for me to say yes.

She came through the door and set both bottles on the hall table.

Then she saw Rafe standing at the end of the hallway, and she stopped.

"Rafe."

"Daph."

Nobody said anything for a moment, and I could hear the kids whispering behind their door.

"I called you fourteen times," Daphne said.

"I know."

"I thought something had happened to you."

She crossed the hall and put both hands on his chest.

He let her. He didn't put his arms around her, but he let her.

"Did you know?" he asked.

Daphne's eyes went straight to me.

It was a very short look, and I understood it as a plea.

She was terrified.

Her fiancé had just learned he had three children, and she was afraid he would think she had helped hide them.

"No," Daphne said. "How could I? She never told anyone, Rafe. Not me, not her own mother's friends."

She waited, and her eyes begged me.

I should have said the truth right then.

But Rafe was looking at me with a face I could not bear, and Daphne's mascara was running, and I was tired in a way that made it easy.

"I told no one," I said.

It wasn't a lie exactly. It just wasn't the answer to his question.

Rafe nodded slowly.

"The engagement is paused," he said to Daphne. "I'm sorry. I can't stand in front of anyone and promise a life until I know what mine already is."

"I understand." Her voice broke on it. "Of course I understand."

He turned to me.

"I'd like to come Saturday. If you'll let me."

"Rafe."

"I'm not asking for anything else. I want to learn how Rory takes his juice."

"With a straw," I said, before I could stop myself. "Not a bent one."

Something moved in his face, and then he went down the porch steps into the dark.

I locked the door and leaned my forehead against it.

Daphne put the kettle on, because she always did.

She knew where I kept the mugs. She knew which cabinet stuck.

"Mags." She set a cup of tea in front of me and sat down. "You scared me to death tonight."

"I scared you?"

"I thought he'd ask about me. About whether I knew. I'm so sorry I lied to his face."

"You didn't lie. I asked you to keep it from him."

"I know. I'd have kept it forever." She took my hand. "But he's going to be so angry with me when he learns, and I'm going to lose him."

I squeezed her fingers.

"He won't blame you. I'll tell him it was all me."

"You're the best person I know."

She meant it. I think I even believed she meant it.

She wiped her eyes and tilted her head.

"What did he say to you in the lobby? I saw you two."

"He asked if I ever got his letters."

Daphne's cup stopped halfway to her mouth.

It was only a second.

"Letters?" she said. "From six years ago? Honey, he was drunk half of that year. People say all sorts of things."

"What letters, though?"

"I don't know. I'd forget it if I were you." She smiled. "Let me deal with his mother. I'll talk her down before breakfast."

"His mother tried to call security on my children."

"I'll make her cry about it. I swear."

That made me laugh, and for a minute I felt like we were twenty again.

She hugged me for a long time on my doorstep and told me to sleep.

I went to bed at eleven.

At eleven forty a fist knocked on the front door.

I opened it in my robe to a man in a windbreaker with a clipboard, and a smaller man behind him holding a cardboard envelope.

"Margot Eastlake?"

"Yes?"

He put the envelope in my hands.

"You've been served. Emergency petition for temporary custody, filed by the minor children's paternal grandmother. Hearing's Monday at nine."

I stared at the page.

At the bottom was a line for the respondent's name.

It was mine.

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