The Nanny, the Husband, and the Woman They Forgot I Was novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: The Monitor
Through the baby monitor Margot hears her husband and her best friend in the nursery, saves the clip, calls a divorce attorney and copies his cloud, where she finds a draft petition to take her daughter.
I forgot to switch off the baby monitor.
That's how I heard my husband say my best friend's name in our daughter's nursery.
"Harper. God, Harper."
I was standing at the kitchen counter in my nursing bra and a pair of Blake's old sweatpants.
I had a warm bottle of milk in my hand. I'd pumped it ten minutes earlier.
The monitor sat by the toaster with its little green light on.
On the screen, the nursery was gray and grainy.
The crib was empty. Rosie was asleep in the bassinet in our bedroom down the hall.
But the rocking chair wasn't empty.
I'd picked that chair out at thirty-six weeks pregnant. I'd sat in it in the store for twenty minutes to be sure.
Now my husband was in it, and Harper Bell was in his lap.
"You're everything she isn't," Blake said.
I set the bottle down.
I didn't drop it. I set it down.
"She doesn't even try," he went on. "She smells like spit-up. She cries more than the baby does."
Harper laughed.
I had known that laugh since we were eighteen, in a Stanford dorm with a broken radiator.
I'd heard it at my wedding, in the front row.
I'd heard it three months ago in the hospital, when I put my newborn in her arms and said, "I'm so lucky you're the one helping me."
"Poor baby," Harper said. "Let me take care of you."
Then neither of them said anything for a while.
They didn't need to.
I walked to the hallway mirror.
A woman looked back at me with four-day hair and purple shadows under her eyes.
My body was still soft and sore. The scar from the C-section pulled when I stood up straight.
Seven years ago, I'd been a corporate attorney.
I had graduated top of my class at Columbia Law.
I had drafted the founding papers for a little Palo Alto startup called Kestrel, and I'd gone to dinner with its founder, and I'd married him.
Kestrel went public last spring.
Blake was worth three hundred million dollars on paper now.
When I got pregnant, he'd held my hand and said, "Our baby deserves a mother who's present, Margot. Not a billing machine."
So I quit.
I became present.
I also became invisible, apparently.
A thin cry came out of the monitor's second channel.
Rosie.
I went up the stairs one at a time, holding the rail.
The nursery door was closed.
I walked past it.
Rosie was red-faced and furious in her bassinet, both fists up.
"I know," I whispered. "I know, bug. Mama's here."
I picked her up and she latched on right away, one hand fisted in my shirt.
Down the hall, the rocking chair creaked.
Neither of them stopped.
My daughter was crying three doors away, and her father didn't hear her.
I carried Rosie downstairs and sat at the kitchen table.
I opened the monitor app on my phone with my thumb.
It had a button I'd never used. Save clip.
I saved the whole clip.
Then I emailed the file to myself, and to a second address I'd made in law school and never closed.
Then I picked up my phone again and scrolled to a number I'd kept for six years.
Vivian Chen.
The most feared divorce attorney on the West Coast.
I had sat across a table from her once, as a second-year associate, and watched her take a hedge fund manager apart before lunch.
It was 10:58 at night.
I called anyway.
It went to voicemail.
"Ms. Chen, this is Margot Linwood. I used to be at the firm on University Avenue. My husband is Blake Linwood. I'd like to retain you. Tonight, if you'll let me."
I hung up.
Four minutes later my phone buzzed.
"Linwood," Vivian Chen said. "Kestrel?"
"Yes."
"Is there a prenup?"
"I wrote the fidelity clause myself."
There was a short pause.
I heard her chewing something.
"Don't confront him," she said. "Don't cry where he can see. Get me everything. My office, nine a.m."
She hung up without saying goodbye.
I opened my laptop with one hand.
Blake had always thought I didn't know his passwords.
He used the same one for everything. Our wedding date, backward, with an exclamation point.
He thought the milk and the sleepless nights had melted my brain.
I logged into his cloud account and started downloading.
Texts. Photos. Bank statements.
A Cayman Islands account I had never heard of.
Rosie fell asleep against my chest, warm and heavy.
Upstairs, it went quiet.
Footsteps came down the stairs.
Blake stopped in the kitchen doorway with his hair messed up.
He smelled like Harper's vanilla perfume.
"Hey," he said, and went to the fridge. "She okay?"
"She was crying."
"Was she? I didn't hear anything." He took out a sparkling water. "Harper's going to sleep in the guest room tonight. Rough day."
"Sure," I said. "Whatever she needs."
He finally looked at me.
His mouth twisted.
"You should shower, Mar. You look..."
He waved a hand at all of me and left.
The download bar crawled to one hundred percent.
I clicked through the folders, looking for more about the Caymans.
Instead I found a folder called "R."
Inside was one document.
It was dated last Tuesday, from the office of Blake's lawyer.
PETITION FOR EMERGENCY CUSTODY.
Mother is emotionally unstable and unfit to care for the minor child.
Father requests sole physical custody.
Proposed primary caregiver: Harper Bell.
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