Eight Months Pregnant, My Husband Locked Me in a Freezing Cabin for His Ex on Christmas Eve novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Phone in His Pocket
On Christmas Eve Neil takes Hallie's phone in front of fourteen guests and bolts her into the freezing cabin; she picks up the poker and her water breaks.
At eight o'clock on Christmas Eve, in front of fourteen people, my husband took my phone out of my hand and put it in his coat pocket.
Nobody said a word.
My mother-in-law kept pouring cider.
I was thirty-four weeks pregnant, standing in her living room with a paper plate of ham.
"Neil, give that back," I said.
"Battery's at four percent," he said. "I'll charge it in the car."
He smiled when he said it, so everyone smiled with him.
Neil's ex had arrived an hour before, with snow in her hair and a rolling suitcase.
Her name was Whitney. She and I had met twice, at his cousin's wedding and at her mother's funeral last month, where I had held her purse while she cried.
She had come straight to me tonight.
She pressed a thermos of ginger tea into my hands and knelt, with her bad knee, to put a pair of wool slipper socks on my swollen feet.
"You're the only one here who ever asked how I was," she said.
I almost cried myself. I thought, I am so glad she is here.
That was the first time I was glad.
Then Neil said, "Mom's giving us a gift. One quiet night at the cabin. Just you and me."
"The ridge road in the dark?" I said. "Neil, I'm due in January."
"The heat's been on since noon," Joyce said. She squeezed my arm. "And Eli plows that road twice a day. You'll be fine, sweetheart."
"Which hospital are you using again?" she added. "Alder Pass General, or Summit?"
"Alder Pass. I told you."
"And the date. January twentieth?"
"Yes, Joyce."
"Just checking," she said. "I like to know these things."
Everyone laughed. Somebody said, "Go, enjoy it."
In the front hall I stopped to put on my coat.
Two car seats stood by the door. One was out of its box, the other still in it.
"Why two?" I asked.
"One for each car," Joyce said. "So you're never caught without one."
I thought that was kind.
Neil carried my overnight bag. Whitney hugged me at the door and whispered, "Thank you for sharing him tonight."
I didn't understand that either. I thought it was a grieving woman's thank-you.
The drive took forty minutes. It had started to snow hard by the time we left the last streetlight.
Neil didn't talk. His hands stayed at ten and two.
"Stay the night with me," I said. "Whitney can wait for tomorrow."
"I will," he said. "I'll be here at noon."
That was not an answer to what I'd asked, and I knew it.
The cabin sat dark at the end of a long drift. Neil had to carry me the last stretch of the porch steps because the ice was bad.
Inside it was freezing.
I could see my breath.
"The heat's off," I said.
"I'll check it," he said. "Sit."
He set me on the couch and went back out to the porch.
I heard the door close.
Then I heard a key turn in the deadbolt, from the outside.
I got up so fast that the room tilted.
"Neil?"
I pulled at the handle. The bolt didn't move.
"Neil, open the door."
His shadow stood on the other side of the glass.
"It's one night, Hallie," he said. "Whitney is not okay. She said she can't be alone tonight, and she means it. I can't let something happen to her."
"I'm eight months pregnant! The heat is off!"
"Mom said it was on. It'll warm up. I'll be back at noon, I promise."
"Where's my phone? Give me my phone."
"Please don't make this harder."
He walked down the steps.
I went to the big front window, because it was the only place I could see him.
He crossed the snow to his SUV without looking back once.
I put my palm flat against the glass.
I knocked until my knuckles hurt.
The taillights went red and then went out of sight down the ridge.
The thermostat on the wall read forty-one degrees and its screen was blank.
The landline on the kitchen wall was dead. The cord had been cut clean at the base.
The wood stove was empty. The wood box on the porch was on the wrong side of the door.
The front windows were triple-pane. I knew, because I had written the check for them.
I stood in the middle of the room in Whitney's wool socks, with my hand on my stomach.
My husband had known all of this when he carried me up the steps.
I could have waited until noon.
I could have sat in my coat and told myself he'd come back.
I looked at the iron poker beside the cold stove.
So I picked it up.
I raised it over my shoulder and swung at the kitchen window.
The glass held.
I swung again, harder, and a crack ran across it.
Then something warm ran down both my legs, and my water broke.
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