The Choices We Made novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Madam Is Home
Eliza comes home from half a month away, is taken to bed by her cold husband, finds the other woman saved in their son's phone, and decides to end the marriage. A new message lights up his phone: does she still not know?
"Sir, Mrs. Schermerhorn is home."
The housekeeper's voice carried up the stairs while Eliza was still handing her coat to the driver.
She had been gone fifteen days, at a course to renew her nursing license.
She had not told anyone in the house why she wanted it.
Partway up the staircase, a hand closed on her wrist and pulled her through the bedroom door.
Her husband did not say hello.
He rarely spoke when he wanted her.
He shut the door with his shoulder and kissed her hard.
One hand held the back of her neck. The other was already pulling at her buttons.
Eliza hated how fast her body answered.
He laid her on the bed and pushed her skirt up around her waist.
His mouth went down her throat and over her breasts, and she arched into it with a sound she hadn't chosen.
He dragged her underwear aside and slid two fingers into her until she was wet and shaking.
Then he was inside her, deep and slow at first, his hands locked on her hips.
"Weston," she said.
He didn't answer. He drove into her harder, until she gripped the sheets and came with her teeth in his shoulder.
He followed with a low groan against her neck.
Afterward the blanket lay twisted under them, and the heat left the room a little at a time.
Eliza got up without looking at him and took the pill bottle from the nightstand drawer.
She shook one into her palm.
"Didn't you always want a child of your own?" Weston said behind her. His voice was flat. "I never refused to give you one."
She swallowed the pill dry.
"I told you I would never sign her letter of forgiveness," she said. "You signed it for me. So no. There won't be another."
She didn't have to look for the date. It came up on its own.
Five years ago she had been seven months pregnant, walking in the garden of this house.
Gretchen Kittredge, who had been all smiles over the tea tray that afternoon, had crossed the lawn and kicked her in the stomach.
Eliza woke in a hospital bed with her belly empty, and a doctor told her the baby had been born still.
Her own name sat at the bottom of the forgiveness letter, in Weston's handwriting, and the charges were dropped.
"That was five years ago," he said now, and his palm brushed her cheek. "We adopted Albie. Why do you keep going back to it?"
His thumb moved once under her eye.
"If you don't want another child, don't have one. Do what you want."
He went into the bathroom, and the shower came on.
Eliza wiped her face, pulled her blouse straight, and went down the hall to the nursery.
The nanny stood outside the door. "He's asleep, Mrs. Schermerhorn. Mrs. Constance asked that he be in bed by eight."
He wasn't.
Albie sat at his little table in dinosaur pajamas with a tablet propped in front of him.
He was on a video call, humming two low notes between sentences.
They were the same two notes Eliza had hummed to her belly for seven months.
Weston had brought Albie home at three weeks old, and she had hummed him through that whole first winter.
He must have kept it from then.
"Albie?" she said.
He ended the call without turning his head.
She crossed the room and pulled him into her arms. She had barely kissed his hair when he burst into tears.
"I don't want you! You're the fake Mommy!"
Eliza held very still.
She had raised him since he was three weeks old. She had never once told him where he came from.
"Baby, I've missed you," she said. "I've been gone so long."
He kept screaming. He only went quiet when she let go and stepped back.
She took the tablet with her. He was five, and he was not going to spend his nights on a screen.
In the hall she looked at the call history.
Every call was to a contact saved as "Syd."
Her chest went tight. She told herself it was a new teacher from his school.
"Has Albie's school hired a woman recently?" she asked the nanny.
The nanny shook her head.
Back in the bedroom, Eliza sat on the edge of the bed and opened the messages on the tablet.
It was signed in to her husband's account. She had never known that.
The first thread on the list was from Gretchen Kittredge.
She scrolled up. Then she scrolled up again.
They wrote to each other every day, and they had for years.
Gretchen wrote about Albie's lunches, his loose tooth, his drawings.
She wrote like a mother reporting to a father.
Three times, she wrote our boy.
Eliza's hands shook so hard she nearly dropped the tablet.
Gretchen had not been sorry. She had not been kept away. Weston had let her come closer.
Eliza photographed the thread with her own phone, one screen at a time.
The water stopped in the bathroom.
Weston came out in a towel. He looked at the tablet, then at her wet, swollen face.
The want that had been in his eyes a minute ago was gone.
"Do you remember what day it was?" Eliza said. "The day our baby died."
"You're not yourself," Weston said. "We'll talk tomorrow."
He took his phone from the nightstand. It lit up in his hand, and the screen was turned toward her.
Gretchen: Does she still not know?
His face did not change.
He turned the phone against his chest and walked out.
Eliza sat alone on the creased bed.
Six years of marriage, and he could not say the date.
She wasn't going to ask again.
She was going to end it.
She also meant to find out what she still didn't know.
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend