The Baby Couldn't Tie Him, The Lie Did novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: Singapore

Mitchell comes home and explains the forced marriage as paper only, then leaves when Blair calls, and his tablet lights up: "Did she agree to give us the baby yet?"

I looked at the date until the screen went dark.

"Where did you take this?" I asked.

"Nine Crescent Row." My mother put the phone away. "The agency sent me there two weeks ago. Tuesdays and Fridays."

"You've been cleaning her house for two weeks?"

"I didn't know whose house it was until today." Her jaw worked. "Today I dusted the hall table."

She didn't have to say what was on the hall table.

She wanted me to come home with her.

I said no.

I wanted to hear what he would say.

The apartment was on the fourteenth floor of Harbor Heights. Mitchell had found it three years ago.

"Company lease," he'd said. "Saves us on taxes."

I sat on the sofa with the lights off and waited.

The nursery door was open down the hall.

I had painted it sea-green myself in August. My mother had sewn a mobile of little felt boats to hang over the crib.

At eleven-forty, a key turned in the lock.

Mitchell came in slowly.

He turned on the lamp and saw me.

"Val."

He crossed the room and knelt in front of me. He put both hands on my belly.

I let him. I wanted to see how long he'd keep them there.

"I'm so sorry you had to find out that way," he said.

"How did you want me to find out?"

"I didn't. I wanted to fix it first."

"Fix what, Mitchell? Say it."

He sat back on his heels.

"The January before last, my mother threw the anniversary party at the Harbor Club."

I remembered. He'd told me he was at a client dinner.

"I drank too much. I don't remember most of it. I woke up in a suite upstairs." He swallowed. "Blair was there."

"And?"

"And six weeks later she told me she was pregnant."

The lamp buzzed.

"My mother said if I didn't marry her, Pendry Marine would pull out of Thornton Holdings. Her father would make sure of it."

"You left your family. You said so. For me."

He rubbed his face.

"Two years ago I went back. Just for business, Val. Thornton Holdings is Northlight's biggest client."

I had written half the code that client ran on.

I hadn't known the client was his mother.

"So you married her."

"At the courthouse. Ten minutes. I had to." He grabbed my hands. "She lost the baby seven weeks later. I haven't touched her since. I swear to God."

"You told me you were in Singapore."

"I know."

"You called me at midnight every night that week."

"From the car. Outside the Thornton house." His voice cracked. "I couldn't stand not hearing you."

He'd brought me a silk scarf that week. Blue, with little cranes on it.

The tag had said Halloway's. The department store on Wharf Street.

I had thought he'd forgotten to take it off.

"It's paper, Val," he said. "It's a piece of paper to keep my mother quiet and her father happy. You're my real wife. You always were."

"She called you her husband in front of the police."

"She was upset."

"You called her sweetheart."

"I didn't know you were there."

He heard it as soon as he said it.

His eyes dropped.

"You wanted my mother charged," I said. "A fifty-four-year-old woman who put her savings into your company."

"I didn't know it was your mother."

"And if it was someone else's?"

He had no answer for that.

He put his forehead against my knee.

"Give me time. Three years, maybe less. I'll get Northlight clear of the Pendry contract, and then I'll end it. I'll marry you properly. In front of everybody. The way I promised."

In front of everybody.

He'd said the same words on the beach at Gull Point, with the wind taking half of them away.

His phone rang in his coat.

He looked at it and silenced it.

It rang again.

He answered on the third.

"Blair, I can't talk right now."

I could hear her through the phone. Crying hard.

"She knows where I live, Mitchell. Her mother has a key. What if she comes back tonight?"

He looked at me.

I looked back.

"The agency will take the key back," he said into the phone. "I'll call them."

More crying.

"Okay. Okay. I'll come. Twenty minutes."

He hung up and stood.

"She's scared," he said. "Your mother really hurt her, Val. I'll just calm her down and come straight back."

"Don't bother."

"Don't say that. Please."

He kissed my forehead. I didn't move.

The door clicked shut behind him.

I sat there a long time.

Then I got up to get some water because the baby was pressing on something.

His tablet was lying on the kitchen counter, charging.

He used it for work. It was synced to his phone.

He'd never locked it. He'd never had a reason to, with me.

The screen lit up while I was filling my glass.

A message.

From Blair.

"Did she agree to give us the baby yet?"

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