At 34 Weeks Pregnant, I Found My Husband Kissing Her in Our Baby's Nursery novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Empty Chest

Becky goes back for Maisie's cedar chest, meets neighbor Hamish, and finds Kelsey in her kitchen announcing she is twelve weeks pregnant; the chest is empty except for a note from Russell to Kelsey dated March 10th.

I did not sleep, so at nine the next morning I was standing in front of my own house with Tamara and a key that still worked.

Russell's car was gone from the driveway.

The shower balloons were still tied to the mailbox, drooping.

"We get the chest and we get out," Tamara said. "Ten minutes. If anybody cries, it's me."

A man crossed the street toward us in a paramedic's navy jacket, holding a coffee.

He had a short beard and tired green eyes, and he stopped at a polite distance.

"Mrs. Harmon? I'm Hamish Hollander, from the blue house across the street. I saw the end of the party through the window. Are you all right?"

"No," I said. "But thank you for asking."

"Anything I can carry?"

"A cedar chest. It's upstairs, and it's heavy."

"I can do heavy."

"Here's the thing," I said. "You drive, you carry, and you don't go into my son's nursery. That's the rule."

He looked at me for a second, and he nodded once.

"I've never been in your nursery. I don't plan to start."

I opened the front door.

Something was cooking.

Kelsey stood in my kitchen, in a pair of my own wool socks, pouring coffee into a Harmon Furniture mug.

She did not startle.

"I thought you might come," she said. "There's more in the pot."

Tamara said a word I won't repeat.

"You have a key," I said, "and my socks."

"Russell told me to make myself at home while you got settled at your sister's. He's at his mother's. He'll be back at noon."

She lifted her free hand to her stomach and held it there.

"I wanted to tell you myself," she said. "I'm twelve weeks, Becky. I'm sorry you had to find out about us this way. But I think the baby deserves a mother who is honest."

I looked at her hand.

The baby inside me turned over once, slowly.

I had known for a day that my husband was a liar.

I had not known he was going to be a father twice before Christmas.

"Get out of my kitchen," I said.

"It's Russell's kitchen too."

"Get out of my socks, then."

She opened her mouth, and Hamish said, from the doorway, in the same even voice he'd used to offer to carry things, "Ma'am, I think the lady asked you to leave."

"And you are?"

"The neighbor."

Kelsey looked at his jacket, and she looked at me, and she smiled.

"Of course. Becky always gets someone to help her."

She finished her coffee, and she rinsed the mug and set it upside down on the rack.

Then she picked up her tote and walked out past us.

She did not take off my socks until she reached the porch.

Upstairs, the hall closet smelled of cedar.

The chest was where it had always been, against the back wall, under a shelf of winter blankets.

It was two feet deep and four feet long, with a brass lock the size of a coin.

Hamish lifted it by the handles, and his face changed.

"It's not heavy," he said.

"It's solid cedar."

"I know. It should be heavy." He set it down and tilted it, and something small slid from one end to the other and stopped. "Mrs. Harmon, I think there's almost nothing in it."

"It's locked."

"Yes. I noticed."

I stood there in the hall of my own home, and I put my palm flat on the lid.

Russell had told me for four years that he couldn't open it because it hurt too much.

He'd told me that every March, with a wet face.

Hamish carried the chest down the stairs, and he kept his eyes on the steps and never once turned toward the nursery door.

At Tamara's, he set it on the kitchen floor.

"I'll need a screwdriver," he said. "I can take the hinge pins out. It won't hurt the wood."

Tamara found him one in the drawer with the takeout menus.

He knelt, and he tapped out the pins one at a time, and the lid came up with a soft crack of old resin.

Inside was one sheet of tissue paper, folded in half.

Under the tissue there was nothing.

No hospital bracelet.

No envelope with Maisie's curl of hair.

No pressed ivory dress she'd worn for photographs.

No green notebook.

There was only a faint rectangle pressed into the cedar.

Something the size of a notebook had sat there for four years and been lifted out.

"He told me it was locked because it hurt too much to look at," I said.

Tamara put a hand over her mouth.

Hamish stood slowly and put the screwdriver in his pocket.

"I'll go," he said quietly.

"Thank you," I said. "You carried it. You never went near the nursery."

"Rule's the rule."

He stopped in the doorway.

"I'm across the street from your house, Mrs. Harmon," he said. "If you need anything, I'm there more nights than I'd like."

"Please call me Becky," I said.

He nodded and went out, and Tamara locked the door behind him.

I knelt on the kitchen floor and unfolded the tissue paper.

There was a sticky note on the inside fold, in Russell's handwriting.

"For K. Keep these safe and don't let her find out. R."

Under his initial, in the same blue ink, he had written the date.

March 10th of last year.

It was the morning after the day he had spent alone at his office with his phone off.

I had been so proud of how well he was coping.

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