I'm Having His Baby. Great. Smile for the Cameras. Here's Your Scandal and a Court Date novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Page Nine

Marshall Breckenridge, who said no ten months ago, reads her post-nup, and the clinic reveals Grady has been tracking her birth-control refills.

Marshall Breckenridge's office was one room over a tire shop on Brandt Street, and the whole floor smelled of rubber.

I had been there once before.

Ten months ago I had sat in one of its two client chairs for nine minutes, until he told me his firm had a conflict.

Today I climbed them with a pregnant twenty-three-year-old behind me and a husband's voicemails stacking up on my phone.

There was a frosted glass door with his name stenciled on it, and a light on behind it.

I knocked once and went in.

He was standing at a filing cabinet with his sleeves rolled to the elbow and a steel watch on his left wrist.

He turned, saw me, and put the folder down very slowly.

"Mrs. Lindemann."

"Whitlow," I said. "I kept my name."

"Ms. Whitlow." He glanced at Cadence and back at me. "I watched the steps on my phone twenty minutes ago."

"Then you know why I'm here."

"I know you said a sentence on live television that every family-law attorney in Montgomery County has already replayed."

"Are you going to say no again?"

I hadn't planned to say that.

It sat there in the room between us.

Marshall Breckenridge took a long moment, and then he pulled out the two client chairs.

"Sit," he said. "Both of you. Is she hurt?"

"I'm fine," Cadence said. "I'm just pregnant."

"That's a reasonable thing to be, in this office."

He didn't smile when he said it, but his voice had changed.

I sat, and I took the post-nup out of my bag and put it in front of him, opened to page nine.

He didn't reach for my hand or offer either of us a handshake.

Last time he had kept his hands in his pockets the whole nine minutes.

"I have a rule," he said, when he saw me looking. "I don't touch clients. It keeps things simple."

"I'm not your client."

"Ms. Whitlow, you walked up my stairs."

He read page nine twice.

His eyes went down the page and stopped on the same clause both times.

"You wrote this yourself?"

"With a legal-aid attorney. After every lawyer in this county told me they had a conflict."

"Because the judge's firm had the county."

"Yes."

"Including mine," he said. "It was mine, then. It isn't now."

He didn't say more than that, and I didn't ask.

He tapped the paper.

"Proven infidelity. Your wording is clean. The problem is the word proven."

"A witness, a document or a confession."

"And a Lindemann will say the witness is a liar, the document is forged and the confession was a joke." He looked at Cadence. "Do you have texts?"

She passed him her phone.

He read for a minute.

"These are good," he said. "These are very good. They also came from a woman who is, as of this afternoon, the other woman. A judge who wants them to be fake will find a way."

"His father is the judge," I said.

"His father was the judge. He's retired. He still picks who sits in the chair."

I laughed, and it came out badly.

"So what do I do?"

"What you've been doing." He pointed at my coat pocket, where the phone sat. "How long has it been recording?"

I took my hand away from the pocket.

"Since the vows."

"One-party consent. You can use every minute of it." He looked at me properly then, for the first time since I'd come in. "You stay in that house. You keep him talking. You keep smiling. And at some point he says a sentence he can't take back."

"He said I'd been emotional," I said. "He said Cadence was a girl with a crush."

"And the cream?" Cadence asked. "The strawberry cream. Is that why you looked at his sister?"

"His sister is allergic to strawberry," I said. "He told me it was hers, and then the car detailer's."

Marshall wrote that down in one line, without comment.

I put my face in my hands for exactly one breath, and then I took it out again.

"There's something else," I said. "He announced my pregnancy before I knew it. He said the clinic called him."

Marshall's head came up.

"Which clinic?"

"Women's Health on Far Hills. I had blood work Monday for a checkup. I never saw the results."

"Call them."

"Now?"

"Put it on speaker."

I dialed, and the receptionist picked up on the second ring, bright and tired.

I said my name and my date of birth and asked who was listed as my contact for results.

Keys clicked.

"Mr. Grady Lindemann, ma'am. Your husband. He updated that the week of your wedding."

"Is that normal? To call a spouse before the patient?"

"Well, he requested it." A pause. "He also asked us to send him a note whenever you refilled your prescriptions. We do it for a lot of husbands."

Marshall had gone completely still.

I said, "Which prescription?"

"Your birth control, ma'am. Every month."

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