On Halloween, My Husband Chose Her Family Over Ours novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Casserole

Colleen arrives at noon with a casserole, a key and a neighbor filming; Hannah refuses the show and gives Lily cocoa, and Lily says Colleen has already picked the yellow nursery for herself.

At noon Colleen came up my front walk carrying a casserole dish in both hands.

Lily walked half a step behind her in a pink coat.

Across the street my neighbor stopped raking and took out her phone.

I opened the door and stepped onto the porch, and I pulled it shut behind me.

"Hannah," Colleen said, and her eyes were wet. "Thank God. I haven't slept."

"You shouldn't be here."

"I know. I know I shouldn't." She held out the dish. "It's chicken and rice. You need to eat for the baby, and I couldn't stand to think of you alone with all of this."

She said it loudly enough to carry across the street.

I understood then why she had come at noon, on a Sunday, to the front door, with a child and a dish.

She was not here to apologize to me.

She was here to be seen apologizing.

"Do you still have the garage code?" I asked.

She blinked.

"What?"

"The garage side door. You typed in the code on Halloween without asking. Do you still know it?"

"Hannah, honey, Derek gave it to me. He asked me to water your plants on weekdays when you were at school. He said you were overwhelmed with the pregnancy and didn't want to bother you."

"Eleven times since August."

Her face did not change, and her voice did not change either.

"I wasn't counting."

"I was. I have the pictures."

"Then you know I only ever went in for ten minutes."

"With Derek's car in the driveway."

She looked down, and then up, and gave a small shaky smile that was meant for the woman across the street.

"I'm not going to argue with you on your porch," she said. "I'm going to give you this back."

She set the casserole on the porch rail.

She reached into her coat pocket and took out a key on a pink ring.

She laid it on top of the foil.

"There," she said. "I never wanted to hide anything from you. I only wanted what's best for the girls."

The neighbor lifted her phone higher.

I could have taken the dish and the key and said thank you.

That was the outcome Colleen had planned for.

"Pick up the dish," I said.

"Hannah."

"Take your food and your key and go. You can tell the camera whatever you like. But you aren't coming into my house again, and you aren't speaking to my daughter at school unless it's about a fever."

"I'm her nurse."

"Then the principal will send someone else."

Colleen drew in a breath and let it out slowly, with her hand on her chest.

"I'll go," she said. "Lily, honey, wait here a minute. I'll get the car."

She took the dish and the key and walked down the steps and across the lawn to the street, with her head held high.

The neighbor kept her phone up until the car door shut.

Lily stayed where she was on the third step.

She was eight, and small for it, with straight light-brown hair that she tucked behind her left ear when she looked at me.

She did not say hello.

I looked at her for a moment.

She had done nothing, and nobody had asked her anything.

"Are you cold?" I asked.

She shook her head.

"There's cocoa inside, if you want some. I'll bring it out here."

"Okay," she whispered.

I went in, poured a mug, and brought it back with a blanket from the hall chest.

She wrapped it around her knees and held the mug in her left hand.

"Maddie's upstairs," I told her. "She's not ready to see anyone yet. It's not your fault."

"I know."

She sipped the cocoa.

"Mom says I'm not supposed to talk to you," she said. "She says it'll upset you."

"You can talk to me if you want."

"She's nice to me." Lily said it quickly. "She cries a lot at night, though. And she works on her phone all the time, with Derek."

"Does she?"

"She told me Derek's going to buy us a house by Christmas. A big one, with a yard, and I'd get to pick my room."

I kept my voice very even.

"Did she say which house?"

Lily turned and looked up, past me, at the second-floor window above the porch.

It was the window of the little room next to Maddie's, painted pale yellow, with a crib I had put together myself in September.

"This one," she said. "She said the yellow room is going to be mine."

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