He Married My Best Friend While I Gave Birth, So I Left novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Car Seat

Eleanor arrives to take Poppy home, and Lacey refuses in front of the ward. Brady and Daphne walk in still in wedding clothes, and Daphne announces she is pregnant.

Eleanor Angell came into my room at 5:30 with a driver behind her and an empty car seat in his hand.

She was Brady's mother, sixty-one, in a camel coat and pearl earrings, and she smiled at me from the doorway.

"Lacey, dear. You must be exhausted."

I was sitting up in bed with Poppy asleep on my chest.

Byron stood by the window with his arms crossed.

Eleanor glanced at him once and didn't greet him.

"Brady told me you'd want some rest tonight," she said. "Daphne has everything ready at the house. The driver will take the baby, and you can sleep."

"No," I said.

She kept smiling.

"You're tired, and you're not thinking clearly. Nobody would judge you for it."

"My husband married my best friend this afternoon," I said. "I'm thinking clearly."

A nurse had stopped in the hall with a blood pressure cuff in her hands.

Another one stopped behind her.

Eleanor lowered her voice to the one she used on waiters.

"That was a private family matter, and we'll discuss it privately."

"You can discuss it with the people at the desk," I said. "They're listening."

Byron stepped away from the window and stood at the foot of my bed.

He didn't say a word.

He didn't have to.

Eleanor looked at him then, and the smile thinned.

"Byron, you were not invited to this room."

"I was invited by the person in the bed," he said. "She called me. Nobody called you."

"Mrs. Angell," the nurse said from the hall, "the baby stays with her mother unless her mother says otherwise."

"Her mother is not well," said Eleanor.

"Her mother is holding her baby," said the nurse.

I had never liked that nurse so much in my life.

Then I heard heels in the corridor, and a man's quick steps behind them.

Brady came through the door first.

He was still in the navy suit, with a white rose pinned to his lapel and a smear of cake frosting on his cuff.

He did not look at the baby.

He looked at the nurses in the hall, and then at me.

"Lace, don't make a scene," he said. "People are looking."

Daphne came in behind him.

She was still in the ivory dress, with her hair half down and her bouquet of roses in her hand.

She was crying.

"Oh, Lacey," she said. "I'm so sorry, I wanted to tell you myself."

"When?" I asked. "Which part?"

"The wedding," she said. "It all happened so fast."

"You had a dress fitting this morning," I said. "You told me so."

"I did have a fitting."

"You asked me for my due date four times."

Daphne looked at Brady, and Brady looked at the floor.

"I wanted to be there for you," she said.

"You were at the lake house," I said. "I watched you walk down the aisle on my phone while I was pushing."

Behind Brady, one of the nurses covered her mouth.

Daphne set the bouquet down on my tray table, right next to my cup of ice chips.

"There's something else," she said, and she put one hand flat against her stomach. "I wanted you to hear it from me, because we have always told each other everything."

Brady took her other hand.

"I'm eleven weeks," Daphne said. "We're having a baby."

The room was very quiet.

Poppy turned her head against my collarbone and made a small sound in her sleep.

"That's why it couldn't wait," said Brady. "She needed the name before she started to show. You understand."

I looked at him.

He was a man I had been married to for four years, and he stood in a hospital room beside his new wife and asked me to understand.

"Get out," I said.

"Lace."

"Get out of my room, Brady."

"It's not your room," said Eleanor.

She had taken a folded paper out of her handbag, and she held it up between two fingers.

"Perhaps you'd like to read this before you say anything else."

It was a single page with my signature at the bottom.

The header said Family Guardianship Consent.

The date was in March.

I remembered March.

Brady had brought home a stack of insurance papers for the baby and had put little yellow flags where I needed to sign.

I had signed every flag at the kitchen table, with a cup of tea in my other hand.

"You gave us guardianship of the child," Eleanor said pleasantly. "Any time we judge it to be in her best interest."

"I never read that," I said.

"That is not our problem," said Eleanor, and nodded to the driver, who stepped toward the bed with the empty car seat.

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