The Bad-ass Heiress Returns After Divorce novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Printout
The morning after she loses her baby at eight months, Sophia is handed a forged photo and a forged test, signs the divorce, and meets a stranger who says she is a Trezevant.
The nurse had just taken the monitor off my arm when my husband walked in with his mother.
I had lost the baby the night before, at eight months, in a bathroom at his parents' house.
Her kicking had stopped between the soup and the dessert, and I had felt the quiet before I understood it.
The doctors had induced me at midnight, and she was born at four, silent and perfect.
Rhona had held my hand through all of it, still in her scrubs.
I had held my daughter for an hour, and she had Talbot's chin.
Then a nurse took her away, and my body did not understand why.
I had not cried yet, because I knew that if I started I would not stop.
Rhona was on shift in the emergency room, and she had gone to find me a blanket.
So I was alone in the bed when Talbot stopped at the foot of it and would not look at my face.
His mother stood beside him in a pearl-gray suit, holding a folder against her chest.
Camille Trezevant came in behind them, carrying a paper cup of tea.
"Sophia," Talbot said, and his voice cracked on it. "We need to talk about the baby."
"There is no baby," I said.
His mother opened the folder and laid a printed photo across my knees.
A woman in a green dress was kissing a man outside a bar, her hand flat on his chest.
The woman had my hair and my face.
"That was taken in March," his mother said. "Downtown, on a night you told Talbot you were at the diner."
"The diner closed three years ago," I said.
She laid a second sheet on top of the photo.
It had a lab's name across the top and one line circled in red ink.
Probability of paternity: 0 percent.
"We had the blood drawn at your twelve-week visit," she said. "Talbot wanted to be sure."
I turned and looked at my husband.
He was staring at the floor, and his jaw was working.
"You tested our baby behind my back?"
"Mom said it was only a precaution," he said.
"A precaution against what?"
"Against exactly this."
Camille set her tea on the tray table and touched my ankle through the blanket.
"I'm so sorry, Sophie," she said, soft as a nurse. "I know how much it hurts to be found out."
I looked at the photo again, and I made myself look slowly.
"I gave this dress to Goodwill in January," I said.
"Convenient," his mother said.
"Talbot, you carried the bag to the car."
He lifted his head for the first time, and I saw him think about it.
I saw the bag in his hands and the Goodwill sticker on the lot window.
Then his mother put her hand on his arm, and I watched the thought go out of his face.
"The lab does not make mistakes," she said. "And a woman in your position does not get to choose the evidence."
"My position."
"A girl from a closed diner, with no family, whose hospice bills my husband paid."
That one landed where she had aimed it.
My mother's last winter had cost eleven thousand dollars.
The Berriens had written the check, and I had thanked them for three years.
I pushed myself up against the pillows, and the ache in my empty belly reminded me what I had lost.
"Give me the papers," I said.
His mother blinked. "What papers?"
"You didn't come here with a folder to talk. You brought the divorce."
There was a stapled packet in the back of it, and I saw her face change when I held out my hand.
Talbot said, "Sophia, we don't have to do this today."
"You did it yesterday," I said. "You just brought the pen."
"Our daughter has been gone for ten hours, Talbot, and you brought a pen."
I found the line with my name under it.
I signed it in blue ink, fast.
My hand stayed steady, and under the grief something hot and slow had started to burn.
Then I looked at the settlement page and put my finger on the number.
"I don't want your forty thousand dollars."
"It's customary," his mother said.
"Then use it to buy a lab that checks its own work."
I worked the ring off my finger, and it came loose easier than it should have.
I set it on top of the photo, on the face that was not mine.
I asked the nurse at the door for my clothes, and Rhona came back with a blanket and found me dressed at the window.
She looked at my face, then at the three of them, and put the blanket around my shoulders anyway.
"Come on," she said. "I'm walking you out."
We got as far as the lobby before a man stepped in front of us.
He was tall and dark-haired, in a charcoal suit, with gray at his temples and a cream-colored card in his hand.
"Ms. Bulloch," he said. "I'm sorry to catch you today."
"Who are you?"
"Nathan Coldwell. I work for Eleanor Trezevant."
He held the card out, and I did not take it.
"Mrs. Trezevant would like you to come to her house this afternoon," he said.
"I don't know any Trezevants."
"You know one," he said. "She's the woman who just brought her granddaughter to your bedside with a forged photograph."
Rhona stopped breathing beside me.
"Eleanor Trezevant is your grandmother, Ms. Bulloch," Nathan said. "Camille is not."
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