He Toasted His Mistress at My Shower, So I Killed His App novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Guest Suite

Bradley moves Lacey into the house, Cora overhears the plan to call her psychotic and take her baby, and she texts Bea.

I did not send the revocation that night.

An angry email sent from a parked car is a tantrum, and Bradley would call it one in every interview.

I wanted mine to be airtight.

So I sat in the car outside the garden gate until the last guests drove away, then drove around for three hours with the heater on.

At ten I went home, because it was my house.

My grandmother's inheritance had paid the down payment on it.

Bradley was on the front stairs carrying a pink suitcase.

Two more suitcases stood in the hall.

"Oh good, you're back," he said, as if I had gone out for milk. "Lacey's had a long day. She's exhausted. Could you make that chicken soup with the ginger?"

I stared at him.

"She's carrying my son, Cora," he added, lowering his voice as though I were slow. "She needs looking after."

"I'm carrying your daughter."

"And you're doing great." He patted my shoulder, my actual shoulder. "You're always so strong. It's what I love about you."

Lacey appeared at the top of the stairs.

She was wearing my cream silk robe.

My grandmother bought it for my last birthday before she died.

It was the last thing she ever gave me.

"I hope you don't mind, Cora," Lacey said softly. "Nothing of mine fits anymore."

She was eleven weeks pregnant, by her own count.

I had read every book there is about pregnancy, for four years, in waiting rooms.

At eleven weeks, nothing stops fitting.

I did not make the soup.

In the kitchen, Marilyn was already opening my cupboards, looking for the good tea.

"The guest suite needs fresh sheets, Cora dear," she said without turning. "Lacey is sensitive to detergent."

"The sheets are in the hall closet," I said. "You know where it is."

She had a key to my house and had never once knocked.

I went up to the nursery and sat in the rocking chair I had assembled myself, while Bradley was in Boston for meetings.

Now I knew what the meetings were.

The wallpaper Lacey had helped me choose was covered in small yellow birds.

Marilyn appeared in the doorway with a cup of tea she had made in my kitchen.

"The boy will need a room near his father," she said. "Think about which of these you can bear to give up."

"Get out of my nursery."

"For now it's yours, dear." She sipped, unhurried, in my doorway. "Don't let the baby hear you shout."

She left the door open behind her.

Near midnight I went down for a glass of water.

Voices came from the study, and the door was open an inch.

"She's too calm," Lacey said. "It's unsettling, Bradley."

"It's shock. In a few days she'll crumble. She always does."

"And after that?"

Ice clinked in a glass.

"After that we follow the plan I made with my mother. The doctor has agreed to it. Once the baby is born, he'll say she has postpartum psychosis, and she goes to a facility for a few weeks."

I stopped on the bottom step with one hand on the banister.

"My mother will tell the judge Cora has been unwell for a long time," Bradley went on. "We ask for emergency custody."

"Then the baby is ours," Lacey said. "She grows up with our son."

"Two kids under one roof, and no divorce court where Cora can ask for half the company."

Lacey laughed. "You're terrible."

"I'm careful."

I stood in the dark hallway with my daughter turning slowly inside me.

Something in my chest that had been soft for nine years went hard.

They did not just want to be rid of me.

They wanted me locked away and my baby in their arms.

I climbed the stairs without a sound.

I sat on the edge of the nursery floor and typed with steady thumbs to the only person I trusted.

Bea. Tomorrow, eight a.m. Bring the license file. And bring the best custody lawyer you know.

The three dots came up at once, even at midnight.

Eight. The diner off Route 1. I've had my coat on since your wedding.

I opened the home hub on my phone, the software I had written for the house myself.

The cameras on the driveway, the front hall and the staircase were already recording.

I set them to save every file to a drive only I could open.

Then I locked the nursery door from the inside and tested the handle twice.

I lay down in the dark with one hand on my belly.

"I'm not giving you up," I whispered. "Nobody gets you."

Downstairs, my husband laughed at something his mistress said.

He had just picked a fight with the one person who could switch off his app.

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