They Excluded Me From the Family, So I Built a New One novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Family Only (Not Sue)
Folding napkins at her own cottage, Susannah finds the secret chat that plans to keep her out of the engagement photos, saves all of it, calls an attorney, and learns from the bank records that she has paid for the trips; the chat's last message says she signs whatever Desmond puts in front of her.
The tablet on the cottage kitchen counter lit up while I was folding napkins for Kenzie's engagement party.
Desmond had carried in every grocery bag that morning and told me the napkins looked perfect.
It was his old tablet on the counter, and his messages still came through on it because he never signed out.
The preview said: "Once she's stocked the fridge, get her back to Boston by three on Friday."
Under it: "The photographer comes at four. Sue stays in the kitchen for those."
I put down the napkins and opened the chat.
It was called "Family Only (Not Sue)."
My husband had started it nineteen months ago.
There were more than six hundred messages.
Every holiday I'd hosted, every weekend trip, every sudden fight that kept me home had been planned there first.
They'd used my cottage, the one my mother left me.
They'd eaten what I cooked and slept in the beds I made.
Then they'd laughed about it in a chat with my name in the title.
There were four members besides Desmond.
His ex-wife Rosalie, their daughter Kenzie, and Rosalie's husband Carl, who never wrote a word.
The fourth was my niece Libby.
Rosalie answered almost everything with a heart, and Carl answered nothing.
I kept scrolling.
Libby was the girl I'd raised since she was fourteen.
When Desmond wrote that he wanted me gone from every family event, Libby had sent a thumbs-up.
She sent it from my kitchen table, in the college sweatshirt I'd bought her the month before.
I didn't cry.
Desmond was out buying ice, and I didn't wait on the porch to confront him.
I emailed all six hundred messages to myself and sent the screenshots to a second address he had never seen.
Then I took my mother's photo off the mantel, wiped the glass, and laid it in my suitcase.
This cottage was hers, and now it was mine.
It was not their stage for playing one big happy family.
So I stepped out of their family.
I took the tablet into the bedroom and shut the door.
The attorney's after-hours line rang twice.
"I want a divorce," I said.
My voice was steady, and that surprised me.
Desmond came back with the ice and kissed me on the cheek, and I let him.
He drove to Cambridge that night for an early meeting.
At sunrise I drove to Boston, but I didn't go home.
I left the car in a garage downtown and called the attorney again.
The night before I had only said the word.
Now she gave me orders.
"Susannah, pull everything. Joint accounts, cards, loans, insurance. Do it today."
"My own credit report too?"
"Yes. Make sure he hasn't opened anything in your name."
My hands tightened on the wheel.
"The cottage is mine, from my mother. Only my name is on the deed. Can I keep them out?"
"Yes. It's your separate property. They're guests, and guests can be told to leave."
"Even on Friday?"
"Even then. Save your evidence first. I'll write the notice after."
Her voice was flat and almost cold.
It was the first thing all week that made me feel I wasn't alone.
I booked a room in Back Bay for three nights and opened my laptop on the little desk.
My credit report came back clean.
The joint account did not.
There were fourteen transfers to Rosalie over nineteen months.
Every memo read: "Kenzie - extra expenses."
One was twenty-eight hundred dollars, and the next day the chat had a photo of them on a porch in Maine.
One was sixteen hundred, and the week after, they were in Vermont looking at leaves.
I remembered asking about both.
Desmond had said a client needed him to front costs.
I had told him to keep every receipt.
He had held me and said, "Thank God I married someone sensible."
So I hadn't only been left out of the photos.
I had paid for the trips.
I sorted the statements by date and put them in the folder with the chat.
Then my phone rang, and it was Desmond.
"Hey, sweetheart. How's the setup going?"
"Almost done."
"Don't wear yourself out. You take everything so seriously."
He sounded so kind.
"What time should I leave Friday?" I asked.
There was a small pause.
"Two, I'd say. Beat the traffic."
I looked at the chat on the laptop.
He had even given me an extra hour.
"Okay," I said.
He hung up fast, saying a partner was waiting.
Two hours later Libby called.
"Aunt Sue, I'm so sorry. Midterms. I can't come help at the cottage."
Her voice was bright and easy.
"That's all right. When is your last exam on Friday?"
"Late. Then I'm straight back to the dorm. I'm drowning."
In the chat she had already promised to drive Kenzie to her hair appointment near the cottage at three-thirty.
She had no idea where I was, and she was lying to me anyway.
I hung up and sat very still.
The screen of the laptop refreshed on its own.
Desmond had just written: "She signs whatever I put in front of her. Same as always."
Rosalie sent a heart.
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