The Wife He Left for a Baby That Wasn't His novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Closet

Kyle comes home calm and reasonable, blames the clinic for her 'side', and she records him and throws him out; at five the next morning Sam is at her bakery door.

By the time Kyle's key turned in our front door, I had filled six trash bags with his suits.

I hadn't cried yet.

I had gone through the closet in one pass, hangers first, shoes second, and then I stood in the bedroom doorway and waited.

His car had been behind my van the whole drive home.

He came up the stairs slowly, with both hands open.

"Will," he said. "Let me talk."

"You've got until I finish this bag."

I propped my phone against the lamp on the dresser, screen down, and pressed record.

He didn't notice.

He never noticed what I did with my hands.

"I never meant for you to find out like that," he said.

"How did you mean me to find out?"

"I meant to tell you myself. After."

"After the baby."

He rubbed his forehead and sat on the edge of the bed, on his own side.

He did it so gently.

I had loved that about him.

"Dad has a condition in his will," he said. "The controlling shares go to the first son who gives him a grandchild. I turn thirty-five in seven months."

"So you gave him one."

"Bree is a coordinator at the firm. It isn't a love thing. It was never a love thing, I swear to you."

"Your hand was on her stomach."

"For the room."

"There were forty people in the room, Kyle. Not one of them was surprised."

He looked at the floor.

"You and I tried for three years," he said. "You know how it went."

"I know what you told me."

"Will." His voice went soft. "The clinic said it was your side. I was never going to leave you over it. But Dad doesn't care about that, and neither does the board, and I couldn't sit there and watch Sam get everything."

I stopped with the bag in my hands.

I had heard it so many times at dinner.

It's your side. I'm so sorry.

I had cried in the shower for it.

I had stood in the nursery paint aisle for forty minutes once and bought nothing.

"You told me you were in Denver," I said.

"I couldn't have you at the house when Bree was far along. It would have hurt you. I was trying to protect you."

"From a woman who is about to have your son."

"From finding out you can't."

He said it quietly and kindly.

I put the bag down.

The phone on the dresser kept turning.

"Say it again," I said. "The part about my side."

"Willa, don't do this. You know I never wanted to say it."

"I'm just asking you to say it again."

He frowned.

"The clinic said it was your side. I'll never forget how hard you took it."

"Thank you."

He stood.

"You're not going to do anything stupid, are you? I'll take care of you. The house, the bakery. Dad's lawyers can make it easy."

"Easy."

"You can keep the shop. I'll cover your lease for a year. Nobody has to know how this started."

"Forty people know how it started."

"They'll forget."

"Kyle."

He reached for my hand.

I picked up the bag of his suits and put it in his arms.

"Get out of my house," I said.

"Our house."

"The deed has both our names on it. It was my grandmother's money that paid the down payment. You can call your father's lawyers and ask them what that means."

His face stopped being gentle.

It was only for a moment.

I saw what was behind it, flat and cold and counting.

Then the softness was back.

"You're upset," he said. "I'll come back tomorrow, when you've slept."

"If you come back tomorrow, I'll be here with the locksmith."

He took the bag.

He stopped on the stairs and said, "Don't make this ugly, Will. You're not built for ugly."

The front door shut behind him.

I stood in the bedroom and listened to his car start.

Then I picked up my phone and played the recording back to be sure.

His voice came out clear in the room.

The clinic said it was your side.

I sat on the floor with my back against the bed and saved it three times.

Then I sent it to my own email and to the bakery's backup drive.

I did not sleep.

At four-thirty I put on my apron and drove to the shop because there was nowhere else I wanted to be.

The streetlight outside the bakery door was still on.

Someone was sitting on the curb beneath it with his elbows on his knees, a canvas jacket collar turned up.

When my headlights hit him he stood.

He was taller than I remembered, with grey coming in at his temples and a scar through one eyebrow.

I knew him now.

I had seen his back walking across a lawn fourteen hours earlier.

I stopped the van and rolled the window down about an inch.

"Mrs. Rutledge," Sam said. "I ordered the cake."

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