Desperate Housewife? No, I'm Billion-Dollar Revenge novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Split the Bill
In the delivery room Dean's assistant reads out the agreement and he tells Claire to split the bill; she pays, throws them out and gives birth alone, then a stranger texts that she owns a freight company.
Kelsey Roan read page nine of our household agreement out loud while I was seventeen hours into labor.
She stood at the foot of my hospital bed in her gray blazer, holding a folder against her chest.
She was my husband's executive assistant. She had come to the hospital at midnight carrying his phone charger and his coffee.
She had also brought me ice chips, and I had been grateful.
A contraction took me and I gripped the bed rail until it passed.
"Claire, you asked for the epidural an hour ago," the nurse said. "The anesthesiologist is here. He just needs the deposit paid at the front desk."
"How much?" I said.
"A thousand dollars."
My husband sat in the chair by the window with his laptop open on his knees. He had been timing my contractions on it all night and cheerfully reading the numbers out.
"Oh, honey, that's not in the budget," Dean said, and gave my foot a quick pat.
"What budget?"
Kelsey opened her folder.
"Page nine," she said, in the calm voice she used on the phone with clients. "The costs of the birth and the hospital stay are shared equally between both spouses. Mr. Harlan has agreed to pay his half."
She turned the page toward me.
"An epidural is an unplanned procedure. Unplanned procedures are paid for by the spouse who requests them."
I stared at her.
"You signed it three weeks ago, Mrs. Harlan," she said. "You initialed every page."
I remembered that night at the kitchen table.
A stack of hospital forms, little yellow flags on the lines where I was supposed to sign.
Kelsey had called it insurance paperwork. I was thirty-six weeks pregnant and my ankles were so swollen I could not see my shoes.
I had signed wherever the flags were.
"Dean," I said.
He finally looked at me.
"Fair is fair, Claire. It's your body and your choice. Let's split the bill."
Another contraction hit and I made a sound I had never made in my life.
Nobody in that room moved.
The nurse looked at Dean. The anesthesiologist, standing in the doorway with his paper mask pulled down, looked at the floor.
Dean sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose.
"One more thing," he said. "It comes out of your own account. Not ours. If it's from the joint account, it isn't your half."
"Dean, I have sixteen hundred dollars to my name."
"Then you can afford a thousand."
He went back to his screen.
I want to be exact about what I felt, because people expect something big.
It was small and clear. I was done asking.
This was my thirtieth birthday. Dean had been sweet about it all week, which was not like him.
He had asked me twice when the lawyer's thing from my grandfather's trust was due, and I'd said Thursday, and he had said, "Good, good."
I had thought he was being thoughtful. A few thousand dollars would have paid for the car seat.
"Nurse," I said. "Please get my purse from the locker."
She brought it. I found my debit card with shaking hands and held it out.
"Run it," I said. "Now. Please."
A woman from the front desk came up with a card reader. I pushed my card in, entered my pin between two contractions, and pressed the green button.
The reader printed a receipt.
Kelsey stepped forward and took it from the woman's hand.
She laid it flat on the bed tray and took a photo with her phone.
"For the file," she said.
"What file?" I said.
"Dean likes everything documented."
Dean nodded at his laptop, pleased.
The anesthesiologist moved at once. The needle went in. The pain backed off, and for the first time in seventeen hours I could think.
Dean's phone rang. He answered it in the hallway, laughing.
Kelsey followed him out with her folder.
They were back in ten minutes. Dean stood at the end of my bed and checked his watch.
"My mom's on her way," he said. "She wants to be here for the birth. I told her I'd film it."
I looked at the man I had married.
I had given up my bookkeeping job for him. I had fed him, laundered his shirts and driven him to every interview that got him to vice president.
I had never once sent him a bill.
"Nurse," I said, "I want two people taken off my visitor list. My husband and his assistant."
Dean laughed.
"Claire. Come on. You're in pain."
"I'm the patient," I said. "I decide who is in this room."
The nurse picked up her clipboard and crossed out two names.
"Sir, ma'am," she said, "I need you to step into the hall."
Dean looked at her, then at me.
"You're making a scene," he said.
"Then you should leave," I said, "before it gets bigger."
Security came as far as the door. Dean walked out ahead of him.
Kelsey followed him. She did not say a word.
Hazel was born at 4:41 in the morning.
It was only me, the nurse and the doctor, and the loudest cry I ever heard.
They laid her on my chest. She had a full head of dark hair and a furious face.
I cried until the nurse brought me a tissue and said, "Happy birthday, Mama."
At a quarter past six my phone lit up on the bed tray.
It was a number I didn't know.
"Mrs. Harlan, my name is Rafe Ingram. I am the president of Tarrant Freight. At 6:02 this morning you became its majority owner. Please do not tell your husband anything until we have spoken."
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