After My Miscarriage, My Husband Locked Me Out novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Papers

Gwendolyn hands Hannah a separation agreement on the porch and Chandler says Shelby is pregnant; a video of the night is online with two million views.

Roz drove me back to the house at nine the next morning, because I had left my grandmother's cedar box on my dresser.

It wasn't in any of the four garbage bags.

Roz is the charge nurse on my shift, and she picked me up at the corner last night in her pajama pants and a parka without asking one question.

She put me in her daughter's bed and made me eat toast.

Now she pulled up across from the house and put the car in park.

"I'm coming up with you," she said.

"No. If you come, he'll say I brought backup."

"You are backup, Hannah."

"Then be backup from here."

She folded her arms and glared at the porch. "Five minutes. Then I lay on the horn."

I crossed the street.

The front door was open before I reached the steps.

Gwendolyn stood on the mat with a coffee mug in one hand and a manila envelope in the other.

She had on a fresh cardigan, yellow this time.

"Hannah, dear. I thought you might come for your things."

"The cedar box on my dresser."

"I've got it right here." She nodded at the bench beside her. It sat there, the lid shut, my grandmother's initials on top.

I reached for it.

She laid the envelope on the lid, flat, so I would have to touch it.

"Chandler doesn't want this to be ugly," she said. "He's being very generous."

"With what?"

"Read it, dear."

The top page said Separation Agreement.

Under it was a paragraph about the marital residence, and in the middle of the paragraph were the words I, Hannah Birkett, release any and all interest in the property.

A page later was a number. Three thousand dollars.

And a clause that my health coverage would be reinstated through the end of the month, if I signed by the twenty-fifth.

"You cancelled my insurance last night," I said, "and now you're selling it back to me."

"That was a clerical misunderstanding."

"Chandler emailed them himself."

Her smile didn't move at all.

"The twenty-fifth is a Saturday," she said. "We've scheduled a signing here at the house. A woman from the title company. Very civil. You'd be home by lunch."

"Home to where?"

"I'm sure your friends have a couch."

Chandler came out behind her in a gray T-shirt and sweatpants, with his hair still flat from the pillow.

He looked tired and a little hurt.

"Mom, let me," he said.

She stepped back and took her coffee with her.

Chandler pulled the door nearly shut and stood in front of it.

"I didn't want you to find out like that last night," he said.

"Find out what? That you told your boss I'd lost my mind?"

"Shelby's pregnant."

He said it quickly, with his eyes on my shoulder.

"Seventeen weeks. It wasn't planned. I'm trying to do this properly, Han. I'm trying to do right by everybody."

Seventeen weeks.

I had been fourteen.

I did the math without wanting to.

"The soup," I said. "The casseroles. She sat with me on my couch."

"She cares about you."

"She was carrying your baby while I was carrying mine."

"And now you aren't." He caught himself. "I mean, I'm sorry. I am. But it makes everything simpler, doesn't it? Nobody has to be trapped."

For a second I could not hear anything at all, not the street, not the dog next door.

Then I picked up the cedar box and put it under my arm.

I left the envelope on the bench where it was.

"I'm not signing anything," I said.

"Hannah."

"You changed my locks, Chandler. You called me sick in front of your boss. You cancelled my medical coverage the day I left the hospital."

"You'll sign," he said, softer, and he almost sounded sorry. "You always sign. You signed every form I ever put in front of you."

"This isn't a form."

"You don't have anywhere else to be, Hannah."

Behind me, across the street, Roz leaned on the horn.

Every curtain on Linden Street moved.

Gwendolyn had stopped in the hall to watch us. She lifted her mug a little and drank.

I walked down the steps with my grandmother's box and I did not look back.

Roz had the passenger door open before I got there.

She didn't start the car.

She was looking at her phone.

"Hannah," she said. "Don't get in yet. Look at this first."

On the screen was last night's porch, shot from the hall behind Chandler's shoulder.

There was my face at the glass in my scrubs, and his voice saying the word breakdown.

Someone had put a caption over it in white letters: "Nurse FAKES miscarriage to guilt-trip husband at his promotion party."

Under the video it said two million views.

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