My Husband Demanded a Paternity Test over Our Daughter's Red Hair, So I Left Him an Empty House novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Form
Barely an hour after Lydia gives birth to a red-haired daughter, Daniel lays a paternity form across her knees and names her coworker Ben as the father. She signs, says she is leaving when the result comes back, and starts a list titled Everything I Paid For.
My daughter was barely an hour old when my husband laid a paternity-test form across my knees.
I was still in the delivery bed, shaking, with a blood pressure cuff on my arm.
The nurse was taping the IV into the back of my hand.
"Sign here," Daniel said. "And here, for the baby's swab. I already did mine."
I looked at the form. Then I looked at him.
"Daniel, what is this?"
"You saw her hair, Lydia."
I had.
Our daughter lay in the clear bassinet beside my bed, and her striped cap had slipped back.
Under it, her hair was copper red.
Daniel and I both have dark brown hair.
"Babies come out with all kinds of hair," I said. "Look at her face. She has your chin."
"She has a stranger's hair."
The nurse stopped taping.
"Mr. Ferris, red hair is common in newborns," she said. "It can skip a few generations."
"My grandmother had red hair," I said. "My sister has the pictures."
"They're black and white," Daniel said. "I've seen them. Nobody can tell what color anything is."
"Nobody in our family has red hair," his mother said from beside the door.
Judith had been with us since my water broke at dinner.
She had held my hair back when I threw up in the car.
She had rubbed my spine through every contraction, and I had been so grateful she was there.
Now she crossed the room and tucked the blanket up around my shoulders.
"Sweetheart, nobody is accusing you of anything," she said. "It's a formality."
She smoothed the blanket flat.
"Daniel needs to hear it from a lab. Then we can all stop thinking about it."
"Mom's right," Daniel said. "One swab each. Then it's over."
"You think I cheated on you."
"I think I need to know."
"With who?"
He didn't answer. He pulled out his phone and turned the screen toward me.
It was a photo from our baby shower in August.
Ben Rafferty, from my office, had his arms around me and a plate of cake in one hand.
Ben has bright red hair.
"He hugged you for a full minute," Daniel said. "I watched the whole thing."
"Ben's husband was holding the other end of that cake."
"People hide things."
Ben had driven forty minutes to that shower with a diaper cake he built himself.
He had asked me twice if I needed anything on my last day at the office.
He was the first person I texted when my contractions started.
"Mrs. Ferris," the nurse said quietly, "you don't have to sign anything tonight."
I waited for Daniel to laugh.
I waited for him to say he was tired and scared and he hadn't meant it.
Nine months ago he had cried at the first ultrasound.
He had built the crib himself, and he had painted the nursery twice because the yellow was wrong.
He held out the pen.
"Mrs. Ferris," the nurse said again.
"I heard you." I took the pen. "Thank you."
I signed my name on every line.
Then I signed the line for our daughter.
"Good," Daniel said. His shoulders came down. "That's all I wanted."
"It's not all you're getting."
I handed the clipboard to the nurse.
"When the result comes back, I'm leaving you."
He laughed. It was a short, surprised sound.
"Lydia. You just had a baby. Where would you go?"
"Test her," I said to the nurse. "Test him. Put the result in writing, with a doctor's name on it."
"It'll be ready by morning," the nurse said. "We have the rapid lab on this floor."
"Then I'll be gone by noon."
Judith squeezed my shoulder.
"Get some sleep, honey," she said. "Men say things in the heat of the moment. He'll be sorry by breakfast."
I didn't answer her.
Daniel stood at the foot of the bed and let the nurse swab his cheek.
"If it's not mine," he said, "don't bother coming home. My mother will change the locks."
"It's yours," I said. "You can keep every lock in that house."
He frowned. He didn't understand me at all.
Then they went out to the waiting room, and I was alone with my daughter.
I lifted her out of the bassinet with my bruised hand.
She weighed almost nothing.
Her hair dried a little brighter as I watched.
"Hi, June," I whispered.
I kissed the top of her head.
Then I picked up my phone and opened a blank note.
At the top I typed: Everything I Paid For.
By the time the sun came up, the list was three pages long.
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