Betrayed: She Took My Son novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Shower
Melanie walks in on her husband and her pregnant daughter in her own bed, throws them out in front of her guests, and goes into labor. At the hospital she hears her son cry, and the doctor says he never did.
The cake said Welcome Baby Liam in blue icing, and for once a bakery had spelled everything right.
I carried the box out to my car with one hand under my belly.
I was thirty-four weeks along, and my baby shower started at two.
My husband had texted at noon: "Still at the office. Sit down, lift nothing, I'll be home by two. Love you."
My daughter had made my tea that morning and kissed my cheek.
"Go get the cake, Mom," Lacey said. "I'll do the balloons. You've done enough."
She was wearing the gray sweater she'd worn all summer, even in the heat.
She said the air conditioning gave her chills.
I pulled onto our street at one-fifteen.
Cars already lined the cul-de-sac. A neighbor was backing her minivan in beside my mailbox.
Philip's Audi was in our driveway, next to Lacey's Honda.
I told myself he had left early to surprise me.
I wedged the cake box into the neighbor's arms, and she laughed and said she'd put it in the kitchen.
The front door was unlocked.
The balloons were still in their bag on the hall table.
The house was quiet, and then I heard Lacey laugh upstairs.
I took the stairs one at a time with my hand on the rail.
Our bedroom door was shut.
I opened it.
Philip was in our bed with the sheet pulled to his waist.
Lacey sat against my pillows beside him.
She had no sweater on.
Her stomach was round and high. She was seven months along at least.
For a moment nobody said anything.
"Melanie," Philip said. "Don't. Let me explain."
Lacey pulled the sheet up to her chest and put both hands on her belly.
"Mom, please don't scream," she said. "He hasn't moved since this morning."
"He's just sleeping, babe," Philip told her. "Don't get upset."
He had never once called me babe.
There was a small spot of blood on the sheet by her hip.
"How long?" I asked.
Philip looked at Lacey.
"Since last winter," she said. "I wanted to tell you."
"Since the Christmas party," Philip said.
Downstairs the front door opened, and women's voices called hello.
A dozen of them. Neighbors, the girls from my office, the lady from church who had knitted the hat.
Footsteps came up the stairs behind me.
Somebody stopped on the landing. Somebody else said, "Mel?"
I did not turn around.
I looked at the man I had married three years ago and the girl I had raised alone for fifteen years.
I had given Lacey her first bike. I had paid for her nursing classes.
I had let them both live in my house.
"Get dressed," I said. "Both of you. You're leaving my house today."
"Melanie, sit down," Philip said. "You're upset. Think of the baby."
"I'm filing for divorce on Monday."
I said it loud enough for the landing to hear.
"Lacey, take your things and go to wherever he takes you. I don't want to see either of you in my kitchen again."
Lacey began to cry. It was her real crying, the kind with no sound.
"Mom, please," she said.
"Don't call me that."
Then a cramp took me low and hard.
I grabbed the door frame.
Warm water ran down my legs onto the floor of my own bedroom.
"Oh my God," someone said behind me. "Call 911."
Philip was out of the bed in his boxers before I could say a word.
"I'm riding with her," he said. "She's my wife."
I told him no.
He rode in the ambulance anyway, holding my hand, and the paramedic thought he was a husband worth having.
Lacey came behind us in her car.
At Mercy General they wheeled me straight through the doors. I remember a bright ceiling and a nurse saying, "Breathe."
Everything after that went very fast.
At 3:40 I felt him come out of me.
And I heard him cry.
It was thin and furious, and it went on until the nurses carried him across the room.
I laughed. I cried. I said, "Let me see my son."
Nobody put him in my arms.
A doctor stood at the foot of the bed with his mask pulled down. He did not look at my face.
"Mrs. Reeve," he said, "I'm very sorry. Your baby never took a breath."
"I heard him," I said. "He cried. I heard him."
The doctor put a hand on my ankle.
"That happens," he said. "After a hard labor, the mind plays tricks."
I heard him cry. The doctor told me he never had.
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