39 Weeks Pregnant, My Husband Refused to Make Me 1 Bowl of Soup but Made Her 101 Breakfasts novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Number 101
A numbered breakfast text lights up the dashboard on the way to Maggie's last checkup, and she walks into the school Father & Child Breakfast and sits down at their table.
Two blocks from the clinic, my husband's phone lit up the dashboard.
No. 101. You remembered the strawberries again. This morning was lovely.
There was a heart after it.
A photo came up under the words: eggs, pancakes, three plates, and a man's hand reaching across a table.
I knew that hand.
Troy wore his wedding ring next to the watch I had bought him for our fifth anniversary.
He thumbed the screen dark and tucked the phone in the cup holder, the way he always did in the car.
"Who's that?" I asked.
"Someone from work."
"Why is someone from work sending you pictures of breakfast?"
He watched the red light. "A colleague keeps score of who brings in food. It's a stupid office thing."
I was thirty-nine weeks pregnant and the seatbelt was cutting under my belly.
At eleven the night before, I had stood in our kitchen and asked him for one bowl of soup.
Any soup. Out of a can would have been fine.
Troy had not looked up from his phone. "I'm wiped, Mags. Order something."
So I had phoned the diner on the corner, and Caleb Ferris had walked a quart of chicken and rice to my door himself.
He had set it in my hands and said, "Eat it while it's hot."
Troy had been asleep by then.
Now he pulled up in front of the clinic and kept the engine running.
"I'll be back in an hour," he said. "Work needs me for one thing."
"The appointment is at ten."
"I know. Tell them I'm parking."
He did not look at me when he said it.
I got out slowly, one hand on the door and one under my belly.
The nurse took my blood pressure and frowned at the number.
"Is anyone with you?" she asked.
"My husband's parking," I said.
She wrote something and left the room.
I sat on the paper-covered table and watched the clock.
At ten past, I opened the rideshare app and typed in Little Pines Elementary.
I do not know why that was the place.
On Fridays that school hosted the Father & Child Breakfast, and Troy had told me twice this month that he would skip it, since we did not have a child in second grade yet.
He was very clear about that.
A car was four minutes away.
I put my coat on over the cardigan, and the nurse stopped me at the door.
"Mrs. Keller, we haven't finished."
"I'll be back," I said. "I have to see something first."
"At thirty-nine weeks?"
"It's two miles."
She looked at my face and held the door open.
The driver let me out in front of the school.
There was a banner over the cafeteria door with paper hearts on it.
Little Pines Father & Child Breakfast.
At the curb, a gray truck sat with its engine running.
The man behind the wheel lifted two fingers off the steering wheel toward the glass doors, and then he pulled away.
I did not think about it.
I walked in with my coat open over my belly.
The cafeteria smelled like syrup and burnt coffee.
Round tables had blue balloons tied to the chairs.
Every table had a father and a kid, with a mother here and there taking pictures.
At the far table by the window, I saw a navy sleeve and a shirt I had ironed that week.
Troy sat with his back to me.
A round white sticker on his chest said Best Dad, in a child's handwriting.
Across from him was a woman in a blue wrap dress with wavy blonde hair, laughing at something.
Between them sat a boy of about seven with a gap in his front teeth and a pancake cut into squares.
Three plates. Eggs and pancakes. A hand reaching over the table to push the syrup toward the boy.
My husband's hand.
The strawberries were in a little paper cup by the woman's plate.
I walked across the room.
No one stopped me.
A man at the next table looked at my stomach, then at Troy, then down at his own tray.
The woman saw me first.
Her face went through three things at once.
Then she smiled, and it was a good smile.
"Oh, honey, look at you," she said. "Sit, sit. Eli, give her your chair."
She stood and pulled it out for me, and she brushed a crumb off the seat first.
The boy slid off it without a word.
Troy turned.
He went white and then he stood up so fast that his chair fell back.
"Maggie. What are you doing here?"
"The clinic ran long," I said. "I thought I'd come to the breakfast."
So I sat down in the chair the other woman had pulled out for me.
My feet were swollen and it felt good to sit.
I looked at the plates and at the little sticker.
"Is this the colleague who keeps score?"
"Maggie," Troy said, low. "Not here."
"Lacey," the woman said, with her hand out, warm and steady. "We work together. It's so nice to finally meet you."
We had met at his office party, and she had talked to me for ten minutes.
I did not take the hand.
The boy was standing next to me with his arms hanging down.
"Dad," he said to Troy, "is she the one you said was too tired to come?"
The whole table went quiet.
I took my phone out of my coat, turned it on, and held it up.
"Say that again, Eli," I said, pleasantly. "Who is your dad?"
He pointed at my husband.
"Him," he said.
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