On Our Fourth Anniversary, My Husband Posed for Maternity Photos with Another Woman novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: Rule One

I stood up so fast that my chair scraped the floor.

"Ask your son," I said. "He opened my mail."

Marianne smiled at me with great patience.

"Of course he did. It's his child." She rested her fingertips on the tablecloth. "A Kessling baby will be born in a hospital I choose, in the care of a doctor I trust, and the nursery will be in the house where it belongs. We'll discuss all of it at home."

"I'm not coming home."

"Dear, you have no money, no car that starts, and a bedroom above a stranger's shop."

I stopped.

I hadn't told her about the room above the studio.

She watched me work it out, and she looked pleased.

"Mine is due in May," I said. "You'll hear where, when I decide."

I picked up my bag, and Rupert said, "Leah, please," and the lawyer said nothing at all.

Outside, the wind off the lake hit me in the face, and I walked to the gray van parked half a block down.

Rowan had the door open before I reached it.

"She knew where I live," I said, getting in. "Drive."

He drove.

He didn't ask a single question, and he didn't turn on the radio.

At the studio he parked in the back lot, and I went up to my room and lay on top of the quilt in my coat.

I did not sleep.

At two in the morning there was a light under the stairwell door.

I went down in my socks.

The studio kitchen was warm, with the oven on low and a loaf of bread cooling on a rack.

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