The Choices We Made novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: The Nursery Door

Constance waited for an answer, and Eliza gave her one.

"Tell the judge," she said. "Tell him whatever you like."

"You would put your name on a forgery to keep a stranger's child?"

"He isn't a stranger."

Constance's pale eyes narrowed. "I beg your pardon?"

"I'll tell the judge something too," Eliza said.

"What?"

"That a family obstetrician retired to a cottage on your lake the spring after I lost my baby."

The color left Constance's face. It went quickly, and it came back more slowly than it had gone.

Weston saw it.

He stepped between the two women. "Mother, you're going to your room."

"This is my house."

"Tonight it's mine. You won't be alone with Albie again until I know what you did."

"What I did," Constance said, "was keep this family from burning down around a nurse from a mill town."

"Good night, Mother."

She looked at him for a long moment.

Then she picked up her coat from the arm of the sofa and walked out.

Eliza sat down on the edge of the desk. She was shaking so hard that her teeth clicked.

"She'll do it," she said. "She'll tell them I agreed."

"She can't prove it."

"She doesn't need to prove it. She only needs them to doubt me."

"Then I'll sign my own statement," Weston said. "I wrote your name. I'll say so under oath."

"You'd go to prison."

"Then I'll go."

She looked at him.

He stood with his hands at his sides and a red mark on his cheek, and he meant every word.

"Not yet," she said. "I need what you know. Alive and at my side."

"Then not yet."

She did not leave the house.

She told him her terms in the hall that evening, at the foot of the stairs.

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