I Lost My Baby Because My Husband Waited for His Best Friend's Permission novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Wren's Wall

Hallie finds Whitney packing the nursery while Dalton stands by, and learns the house is a Whitbread company lease. She puts her daughter's clothes back herself, then finds Whitney's handwritten calendar in Dalton's desk: the pregnancy was approved conditionally, to be reviewed when the merger closed.

Three days later I walked into our house with my mother holding my elbow and a hospital bracelet still on my wrist.

Whitney Whitbread's black SUV was parked in the driveway.

My mother saw it and said a word I had never heard her say in front of me.

"I'm only getting Wren's things," I said. "Ten minutes."

"I'm coming up with you."

The front door was open.

Two people in Whitbread Hotels polo shirts stood in the hall holding flattened boxes and a roll of tape.

I knew one of them from the Grand's front desk. She wouldn't look at me.

The sound came from upstairs, the scrape of something heavy being dragged over a floor.

I climbed the stairs one at a time, because I still couldn't do them any other way.

The nursery door was open.

The crib was in pieces against the wall.

The little white dresser stood empty with every drawer pulled out, and on the floor beside it were open boxes full of tiny folded clothes.

Whitney knelt in the middle of the room in a black sweater, wrapping the mobile I had hung myself in tissue paper.

"Hallie," she said, and she stood up quickly. "I didn't think you'd come today."

"What are you doing?"

"Sparing you." Her voice was warm and a little shaky. "I couldn't let you walk in here and see all of it. Dalton couldn't bear it, so I said I'd do it. Everything's going to storage."

Dalton was in the corner by the window.

He had a baby blanket in his hands, folded into a small square, and he was staring at it.

"Dalton," I said.

He looked up.

"Did you ask her to do this?"

"I said it would be hard to see." He swallowed. "She offered. It's what she does, Hal. She takes care of things."

"Put it down."

"What?"

"The blanket. It's hers. Put it down."

He set it on the dresser very carefully.

The letters I had painted over the crib were still on the wall, six inches tall, pale yellow.

WREN.

Whitney glanced at them and then at me, and her eyes filled.

"I'll have those painted over this week."

"You'll leave them."

"Sweetheart, it's not healthy to keep a wall like that. Ask anyone. Ask Dalton."

She turned to him.

He did not say a word.

He looked at her, then at me, and then at the floor.

"Dalton."

"I think," he said slowly, "maybe Whit knows what's best."

My mother put down her purse.

"Everybody out of this room who doesn't live here," she said.

The two employees in the doorway looked at each other.

"Mrs. Whitbread said to pack it," the woman from the front desk whispered.

"This is Mrs. Hazard's house," my mother said. "Put your boxes down."

Whitney laughed.

It was a short, pretty laugh, and it wasn't mean. That was what made it so hard to hear.

"Bev, I don't want to fight about this. The lease on this house is in Whitbread Hotels' name. Dalton's housing is part of his position. I signed off on it myself the week you two got married."

I looked at Dalton.

"Is that true?"

"The house is a company property. Yes. It always was."

"You told me we were buying it."

"We were going to. Eventually."

"Eventually," my mother said.

I crossed the room.

I took the baby blanket off the dresser and put it against my chest, and then I went down on my knees and started putting my daughter's clothes back into the dresser drawers myself, one at a time.

Nobody spoke.

The front desk employee put down her tape.

Then she crouched beside me and began handing me the little socks, two by two.

I heard the second employee set his boxes down against the wall.

Whitney watched us. Her face had not changed. She was still a woman who had come to help.

"I'll be downstairs, Dalton," she said at last. "Take your time."

She walked out, and he didn't follow her.

He stood in the middle of the room with his hands hanging at his sides.

"Hal," he said. "I don't know what to do."

"I know," I said. "That's the whole problem."

When the drawers were full again I went down the hall to his study for my laptop.

His desk was neat, the way it always was.

I opened the center drawer to look for my charger, and underneath it, under a stack of takeout menus, there was a folder with my name on the tab.

Not my married name.

Stoltz, H.

Inside was a calendar, a year of it, each month drawn as a neat table.

It was in Whitney's handwriting. I had seen her write place cards.

In April's square she had written: Approve H pregnancy. Yes, conditional. Review when merger closes.

I had told Dalton I was pregnant on the first of April.

He had said he needed a day to think.

The merger had closed the night of the gala.

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