He Left Me Pregnant at Her Funeral, Now His Son Needs Him novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: The Graveside
Ansley's mother slaps Geneva at the burial, Kendra reads the letter aloud, and Vaughn ends it in the parking lot without knowing Geneva is pregnant.
The mother of the woman we were burying slapped me across the face at the grave, in front of ninety people.
"You did this," she said. "You and him."
The priest stopped mid-prayer.
Nobody stepped in.
My boyfriend stood three feet from me, in the black suit I had helped him pick, and looked at the casket.
He did not look at me, and he did not look at the woman who had hit me.
My cheek burned in the cold.
I kept my hands at my sides, because I had learned that month that any move I made would be read as guilt.
Ansley Lowell, his ex, had been dead for six days.
She had died alone in her apartment, and the note she left had two names in it.
Mine was the second.
At the reception, in the church hall, her younger sister stood up with a folded page and a microphone.
Her voice shook so hard the speaker crackled.
"My sister asked me to read this if anything happened," she said.
She read it all.
It said Vaughn had promised to come back to Ansley, and that I had made sure he never did.
It said I had smiled at her while I took him.
It said she could not live in a world where the two of us were happy.
The room turned and looked at me, one table at a time.
A man near the door took out his phone.
I looked toward the exits, and I stayed in my seat.
Kendra, the sister, finished, wiped her face, and came straight down the aisle to me.
I braced for another slap.
She hugged me instead, hard, with her chin on my shoulder.
"I don't blame you," she whispered. "I know what she was like when she wanted something. I wasn't even here. I was at our family's lake cabin all weekend with no signal, and I only heard on Sunday, from a voicemail."
Her hands were warm and shaking.
"Please be kind to yourself," she said. "And to Vaughn. He's going to need people."
I thanked her.
I meant it.
She went back to the front, and her mother put an arm around her, and I sat there knowing that someone in that room had been fair to me.
I found Vaughn Alden in the parking lot at the end of the service, alone beside his truck.
He was holding his keys so tight the metal bit into his palm.
"Vaughn," I said. "Talk to me."
He did not turn around.
"I can't be around you right now."
"We have to talk about us. About what comes next."
"There's no next." He said it to the windshield. "It ended when she did."
My stomach dropped.
"Our future," I said. "What about it?"
"It's in that box in the ground, Geneva."
I made myself breathe.
"We did not kill her," I said. "She wrote that letter to take us apart. She told you for months she would do it if you left, and she knew exactly what would hold you."
"She's gone."
"She wanted us on our knees even after she was dead. You can't let her win that."
He turned.
His eyes were red, and I had never in my life seen him look at me with so little in them.
"Every time I see your face," he said, "I see her in that apartment. I hear the letter."
"Vaughn."
"You can say we're innocent. I'm not able to believe it. Our hands are dirty, both of us, and you know it."
"Please don't do this."
"It's done." He opened the truck door. "As far as I'm concerned, I'm dead to you, Geneva. Don't call me."
He got in.
He started the engine.
He drove out of the lot without a glance in the mirror, and the truck's tail lights shrank down the long gravel road until the trees took them.
I stood there with my cheek still hot.
In my coat pocket I was holding a plastic stick I had taken out of the box that morning.
Two pink lines.
I had planned to tell him tonight, after the service, when we were finally alone.
I had practiced the words in the shower.
I had pictured his face.
I put the stick back in my pocket and my hand over my stomach.
Seven weeks, the app on my phone said.
My phone buzzed against my hip.
It was a number I did not know.
*Mr. Alden asks that you not contact him or any member of the Lowell family again. All communication goes through counsel.*
I read it twice, standing in the gravel.
Then I wiped my face with my sleeve, because there was no one left in that lot to see me do it.
He had walked away from the only person who could have told him there were two of us.
And he did not know it.
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