He Made Her His Old Lady. I Took His Baby and Vanished novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: The Nameplate
Femke arrives to tell Joost she is pregnant and finds her nameplate gone and another woman's cut in its place, then hears him admit the affair in a corridor and decides to tell him nothing.
The night I came to tell Joost I was pregnant, forty bikers watched another woman take my seat.
I stood in the warehouse doorway with the test in my coat pocket.
It was Friday supper at the clubhouse, the middle of November, and the long tables smelled like chili and wet leather.
I had practiced the sentence all the way from the clinic parking lot.
Joost, I'm nine weeks along.
I never got to say it.
My chair was still at the leadership table, the one on Joost's left, where it had been for two years.
The brass plate in front of it was gone.
In its place sat a new one, the cut edges still bright.
SANNE ROOZEN.
I looked at it for a long time.
Then I walked down the side of the room to Truus, who kept the club's books and had given me my first cup of coffee in this building.
"Who changed that?"
Truus's mouth went flat.
"Ask Joost, Femke."
"I'm asking you."
"And I'm telling you to ask Joost."
She would not look at the table.
Up front, Joost tapped the microphone.
He was in his vice-president's cut, his big hands steady on the stand, and he did not look at the doorway.
"Quiet down. One piece of business."
The room went quiet.
"Sanne Roozen is taking over the winter charity run from here on."
People clapped.
Forty people clapped.
Four hundred coats and two hundred toys, every list and every shelter phone number, had been mine since March.
I had built that run.
My name had been on the flyers.
Sanne stood at Pieter Verwey's elbow, Joost's father, the club's president, the old man with the oxygen bottle on a strap.
She was holding his pill organizer in one hand and his coffee in the other.
"Thank you, my girl," Pieter said, and patted her back.
She smiled at the room in a leather cut two sizes too big, buttoned over her middle.
Then she saw me.
She crossed the floor with a fresh mug in her hands and put it in mine.
"You're frozen, Femke. Drink that."
Her voice was soft.
"I wanted you to hear it from Joost, not from the room. I'm sorry it came out this way."
The coffee was hot and exactly how I took it.
I did not drink it.
I set it down on the nearest table and walked to Joost.
He saw me coming and stepped down off the little stage to meet me.
"Corridor," I said.
He nodded once.
The corridor behind the kitchen was cold concrete, with a fire-exit sign buzzing over the door.
I shut us in.
"What is going on between you and Sanne?"
He looked at the sign.
"It's complicated."
"That's not an answer."
His jaw moved.
"We've been seeing each other."
"Since when?"
"August."
August was when he had come home late four Thursdays running and said it was club business.
August was when I had stopped sleeping with my hand on his chest, because he turned away.
I made myself ask the next one.
"Was it physical?"
Joost finally looked at me.
"Yes."
Just that.
No reason after it, no sorry, and no Femke, wait.
The paper in my pocket was folded in quarters, and I pressed my thumb against it until the crease hurt.
I could have said it then.
I'm carrying your child.
He would have stood there and tried to make it a reason for me to stay, and the whole club would have been told by midnight that Sanne's baby had a rival.
I had been one of his people for two years, and I knew exactly how this room used a woman with a baby.
So I did not tell him.
"Okay," I said.
He frowned.
"Femke."
"I said okay."
I walked out through the kitchen door and back into the main room.
Nobody spoke to me.
Pieter watched me go with his head tilted and a kind look on his face.
At the leadership table I stopped.
The brass plate sat in front of my chair, Sanne's name catching the overhead light.
I picked it up.
It was heavier than it looked.
Sanne had come back to Pieter's side, and she saw me lift it, and for the first time her smile slipped.
I carried the plate across the room with every eye on me.
By the front door stood the big gray bin where the club threw out pizza boxes and busted taillights.
I dropped the plate into it.
It rang against the bottom.
Under it, on top of a crushed engraver's bag, lay a yellow order slip with the shop's name printed at the top.
NAMEPLATE, BRASS, ENGRAVED. RUSH.
Ordered three weeks ago.
Signed at the bottom: P. Verwey.
Pieter signed for everything in this club, from the kegs to the funerals, so I did not think about his name for long.
Three weeks, I thought.
Somebody had planned this for three weeks while I was still ordering the coats.
I took the slip out of the bin and carried it to the parking lot, where the cold air hit my face.
I was not going to cry in front of any of them.
I had a test in my pocket, a savings account in my own name, and a yellow slip with a date on it.
I drove home with both hands on the wheel and started a list.
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