My Fiancé's Prenup Erased Me, So I Rewrote My Life novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Saturday at Nine

Claire books a clinic slot for the morning of her wedding, withdraws the adoption petition and hears Lydia script her answer on the phone. At home, Lydia holds up the withdrawal notice and says, "Good. You're back."

I did not drive home from the school.

I sat in the parking lot with the engine off and called the women's clinic on Harding Road.

The receptionist said a cancellation had just opened at four.

"I'll take it," I said.

The waiting room had a fish tank and a basket of old magazines.

I filled out the form with my own name, my own address and a line that asked who to call in an emergency.

I stared at that line for a long time.

Then I wrote my aunt Bridget's number in Chicago.

The doctor was a brisk woman with a gray braid.

She looked at my blood work, then tapped one of the numbers with her pen.

"You're mildly anemic. I can't schedule the procedure on these levels."

"What do I do?"

"Take iron every day. Come back when your numbers come up, and we'll do it then."

She handed me a prescription.

I held it with both hands.

"What's the first slot after that?"

She checked her calendar.

"Saturday morning at nine."

"Saturday," I said.

"Is that a problem?"

"That's my wedding day."

She looked up at me over her glasses.

I kept my face still and looked at the fish tank through the open door.

"Saturday, then," I said.

I booked it before I could talk myself out of it.

The nurse at the desk wrote the time on a card and pressed it into my palm.

"Eat red meat and spinach," she said gently. "And don't carry anything heavy."

I nodded and went out to the hall.

My phone buzzed with a reminder I had set years ago, and I read it out of habit.

Poppy, 8 pm: half the small white pill, crushed in applesauce, or she won't take it.

Nobody else in that house had ever written it down.

In the hallway I called my lawyer, the one who had filed Poppy's adoption papers with me in the spring.

"I want you to withdraw my stepparent petition for Poppy," I said. "I want it done today."

She was quiet for a moment.

"Claire, the court is nearly done reviewing it. If you pull it, you start from nothing."

"How long would that take?"

"More than a year. And Rupert has to sign again."

"I know."

"Then I'll also have to notify his attorney. It's required."

"Go ahead."

I stood in the elevator holding my bottle of iron pills.

Ten minutes later my phone rang, and the name on the screen was Rupert.

I answered in the parking garage.

"Why did you withdraw the adoption?" he said. "Poppy has been talking about it all week."

"She won't see the notice."

"That isn't the point. You promised her you'd be her mother."

I closed my eyes.

I had promised her that on a rainy night when she was three and had a fever of a hundred and three.

Behind him, I could hear a woman's voice.

"I told you," Lydia said. "She knows the prenup isn't going to change. Now she's panicking and using Poppy to punish you."

Rupert didn't tell her to stop.

"She wants you running to her," Lydia went on. "First the petition. Then the baby. Poppy has been her leverage from the start."

The line went quiet.

When Rupert came back, his voice had gone flat and cold.

"Claire, do you really think this will make me change the agreement?"

They had already written my answer for me.

If I said I was hurt, I was bargaining.

If I said I was leaving, I was bluffing.

Whatever I said would only become one more line in their script.

"Think whatever you want," I said.

I hung up.

I drove home with the iron pills rattling in the cup holder.

The house was Rupert's, on a quiet street full of magnolias.

Poppy's yellow raincoat hung on its hook by the door, still damp.

Rupert was in the living room, and so was Lydia.

They both turned when I came in.

Lydia was already holding up Rupert's phone.

The lawyer's withdrawal notice glowed on its screen.

"Good," she said, smiling. "You're back."

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