My Husband, My Sister: A Secret Betrayal novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: The Cake Table
At Bea's third birthday party Teddy reads a heart-emoji text from Aunt Claire off Daniel's phone to thirty guests, a tablet shows thirty-six secret payments to Claire, and Laura walks out with both kids; Claire texts that she is not safe alone with them.
My son read the text out loud to thirty people.
He was seven, he was proud of his reading, and my husband's phone was lying face up next to the birthday cake.
"A red heart. Then, Can't wait for tomorrow. It's from Aunt Claire."
The bounce house kept squeaking and somebody's toddler kept shrieking inside it.
But the women by the lemonade table stopped talking, and two of them looked straight at me.
I was holding the cake knife with frosting on my wrist.
It was my daughter's third birthday, and the cake was a unicorn with a gold horn.
"Mommy, why did Aunt Claire send Daddy a heart?"
Behind me stood the poster board of baby photos that my sister had made for the party.
A newborn in a striped hat, then a baby at three weeks, then a first birthday.
Nothing from the first two weeks of her life.
My husband said the camera had broken that fortnight, and I had stopped asking years ago.
Claire came across the grass fast, drying her hands on a dish towel, already laughing.
"Oh, that's mine! You read so well, Teddy!"
She squeezed him on the shoulder and then squeezed mine.
"Laur, it's the lake day. I'm bringing the kayaks tomorrow and Daniel has to bring the trailer hitch. You know I put a heart on everything."
"She does," said a woman by the lemonade. "She put one on my casserole dish."
Everyone laughed.
Claire kissed my cheek, and her hair smelled like the strawberry shampoo we had both used since we were girls.
She had been at my house since eight that morning, taping streamers and carrying folding chairs.
She had picked up Bea's cake at six a.m. because I'd had a bad night.
It was a perfectly good explanation, and I wanted to take it.
Then my husband, Daniel, walked up, picked his phone off the table, and slid it into his back pocket with the screen facing in.
In nine years of marriage, I had never seen him hide his phone.
"Told you, kayaks," he said, and kissed my temple. "Cake time?"
We sang to Bea, my birthday girl.
She blew out the candles with spit and joy, and everyone clapped.
I cut the unicorn into thirty-one pieces and smiled through all of them.
When the plates were gone, I went inside for more napkins.
The family tablet sat on the kitchen counter, still logged in to Daniel's payment app from when he'd paid the bounce house man.
I wasn't looking for anything.
My thumb just touched the screen.
The first name in his list of recent payments was Claire Hayes.
The amount was $1,200.
The note beside it said only: B.
I scrolled.
There was another one for $1,200 a month earlier, and another before that.
I scrolled until my thumb hurt.
There were thirty-six payments, the same day every month, going back to the winter Bea was born.
Forty-three thousand, two hundred dollars.
And Daniel was a middle school band teacher who clipped coupons for diapers.
"Daniel."
He came in with the trash bag, and I turned the tablet toward him.
He stopped.
I watched him choose his face.
"Okay," he said, low. "It isn't what it looks like. Laur, there are thirty people in the yard."
"What is B?"
"Claire needed help. She asked me not to tell you."
"Help with what, for three years?"
"Not today. Please." He put the bag down and held out his hands. "You've been so tired. You get like this when you're tired, and you start seeing things that aren't there."
"Like what?"
He didn't answer.
"Say it, Daniel. Like what?"
"Like last March," he said. "Let's not do this in front of Bea."
Nothing had happened last March.
I tried to remember anything that had happened last March, and he watched me try.
I put the tablet down on the counter.
Out the window, Claire was on her knees in the grass, wiping icing off Bea's chin and laughing.
I walked out the back door, lifted Bea out of Claire's arms, and called Teddy over from the bounce house.
"We're going to Winnie's," I told him.
Thirty people watched me carry my daughter to the car.
Daniel stood in the doorway and didn't come after us.
So I left.
I was at the end of the street when my phone buzzed in the cup holder.
It was Claire.
"Laura, please turn around. You're not okay to be alone with the kids tonight. Don't make me call someone."
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