He Married My Best Friend While I Gave Birth, So I Left novel · Chapter 3 of 48

Chapter 3: Locked Out

Lacey's house is locked and her cards are frozen, so Byron takes her and Poppy to his farmhouse and sets the terms. A deputy serves an emergency custody petition calling her unstable.

The driver took one step toward my bed, and Byron put his hand flat against the man's chest.

"Not today," Byron said.

The driver looked at Eleanor.

"Call security," said the nurse in the hall, and the second nurse was already on the phone.

Eleanor folded the paper in half and slid it back into her handbag.

"You are making this very hard on a newborn," she said to me.

"You came with a car seat," I said. "I didn't."

Two guards arrived in under a minute.

Eleanor left on her own, walking slowly so everyone could see that nobody was making her.

At the door she turned.

"You'll hear from my attorney, Lacey. He'll be kind about it. I won't be."

Brady went after her with Daphne's hand in his.

He didn't say goodbye to his daughter.

That night I fed Poppy by the window while Byron slept sitting up in the visitor chair, with his boots still on.

On Monday morning the doctor signed my discharge.

Byron carried the car seat out to his truck, and I walked beside him in the sweatpants he had brought from the farm store.

"Where to?" he asked.

"Home," I said. "I need clothes and the diaper bag and my pump."

He drove me to the house on Alder Street that Brady and I had bought four years ago.

The porch light was on.

My key went into the lock and would not turn.

I tried it three times.

On the door was a sheet of printer paper, taped at the corners.

It said: Staying with Mom until things settle down. Don't come by without calling. Locks are changed for everyone's safety. G.

Everyone's safety.

I stood on my own porch with a six-pound baby in my arms, and I read it twice.

"Lacey," Byron said behind me.

"He changed the locks on my house three days after I gave birth."

"I know."

"I need formula tonight, in case my milk doesn't come in."

"I'll buy it."

"I'll buy it myself," I said, and I pulled out my debit card.

At the pharmacy two blocks away, the cashier ran it twice.

"I'm sorry, ma'am. Declined."

I tried the credit card.

Declined.

I tried the card Brady had given me for emergencies.

"This account has been closed," the cashier said, not unkindly.

I stood at the register with a can of formula in my hand and nothing to pay with.

Byron reached past me and set down two twenties.

"Lacey," he said. "My house has a spare room and a crib I bought in September."

I turned and stared at him.

"You bought a crib?"

"Brady said he'd never get around to it," Byron said. "I figured the baby should sleep somewhere when she visited."

He said it flatly, and he didn't look at me while he did.

"A week," I said. "Just until I get my feet under me."

"A week."

"I'll do the dishes. I'm not a charity case."

"Nobody asked you to be."

"And we don't talk about Brady at the table. I can't eat and hear his name."

"Done," said Byron. "No Brady at the table."

His farmhouse sat at the end of a gravel road, with apple trees going bare on either side.

The kitchen was warm and smelled of coffee and wood smoke.

He had put a blue blanket on the crib.

It was folded so neatly that I knew he'd done it that morning, before he even drove into the city.

I laid Poppy down, and she stretched both fists above her head and sighed.

For the first time in three days, I let my shoulders come down.

I was standing in the doorway of the spare room, watching her sleep, when headlights swept across the kitchen wall.

A car door shut outside.

Byron went to the window.

"Sheriff's deputy," he said.

I walked into the kitchen with my heart going fast.

The knock was polite.

Byron opened the door.

The deputy was young and looked uncomfortable, with a manila envelope in his hand.

"Ma'am," he said to me. "Are you Lacey Mercer?"

"Yes."

"I'm required to serve you with this."

I took the envelope and opened it under the kitchen light.

The top page said: Emergency Petition for Temporary Custody.

Under it, in a list that went on for a full page, was every reason Brady and his mother thought I was unfit to raise my own child.

The word unstable appeared four times.

The hearing was in nine days.

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