My Husband Used My Fortune to Support His Mistress novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: His Mother's Soup

Home to find Joan in the guest room, Hannah changes the locks. Joan leaves a key to an old Ohio hotel on the table.

"Congratulations," I said.

My voice came out level, and I was glad.

"Eleven weeks means you'll want a doctor, Camille. Not a gallery."

I turned to the guard.

"Walk them to the street. Bryce can have his suitcase sent to wherever he tells you."

"Hannah," Joan said. "Please. He's your husband."

"I know exactly what he is."

I went back up in the elevator alone.

Eli was waiting at the top with my coat over his arm.

"I'll drive you home."

"I'll drive myself."

"You've had two glasses of wine and no dinner. I'll drive."

He held the coat open and I let him.

We did not talk in the car.

At a red light on the parkway he glanced at me and said, "I'm sorry about the baby."

"Is it his?"

"I don't know."

"Neither do I."

He said nothing else, and I was grateful for it.

My house stands at the end of a gravel road in Westchester, behind a line of old maples.

My father built it for my mother, and I grew up in it.

For six years I had shared it with a man who did not think of it as mine.

The lights were on.

I had not left them on.

"Stay in the car," Eli said.

"No."

I walked up the steps and the front door opened before I touched it.

Joan stood in the hall in her cardigan, holding a dish towel.

"There you are," she said. "I let myself in. I thought a hot meal might help."

I looked past her.

Her tote bag sat on the hall table, and the door to my father's study stood open.

"Why is the study open?"

"Oh." She wiped her hands. "I was looking for the good salt."

"The good salt is in the kitchen."

"Is it? I'm so turned around."

Eli came in behind me.

"Mrs. Danner, how did you get here before we did?"

"Bryce's driver," she said. "Bryce gave me his key years ago, in case of emergencies."

"The locks change tonight," I said.

"Hannah."

"There's a locksmith coming at ten. Eli called him from the car."

I had not heard him call anyone.

I looked at him and he looked back, level and calm.

He had made the call while I was still on the sidewalk.

Joan folded the dish towel in a square.

"I only wanted to be a mother to you," she said. "You lost yours so young."

It was the kindest thing anyone had said to me all day, and I almost believed she meant it.

"Please get your bag."

She picked up the tote.

At the door she turned and set something on the hall table with a small metallic sound.

"Raymond would have liked you," she said. "I'm sorry, honey. He really would."

Then she went out to the car Eli had called for her.

I stood in the hall.

On the table lay a brass key on a paper tag, tied with string.

The tag said, in faded blue ink: Danner Inn, Ashtabula, Ohio. Room 9.

"Who's Raymond?" I asked.

Eli's jaw moved.

"Joan's husband," he said. "He died a long time ago."

"Bryce said my father did something to his family."

"I know what Bryce said."

"Then tell me."

"Not tonight."

"Eli."

"Hannah." His voice was gentle and it made me angrier.

"You froze eleven million dollars two hours ago."

"You took a brooch off a pregnant woman in front of a wedding party."

"By morning you'll be served with a counter-motion."

"Whatever I tell you tonight, you'll hear wrong."

"That isn't your decision."

"No," he said. "It isn't. I'll tell you, I promise. Give me forty-eight hours to be sure of the facts."

The locksmith arrived at ten.

I stood in the study doorway and watched him fit a new cylinder into the front door.

When he had gone, I walked through every room of the house with Eli two steps behind me.

Nothing was missing.

Nothing, except the framed photograph on my father's desk.

It had been turned face down.

I stood it up.

It was my father at his own hotel in Ohio, twelve years ago, smiling in a hard hat beside a man I had never seen, with a sign behind them both.

The sign said: DANNER INN. Under new management.

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