On Our Fourth Anniversary, My Husband Posed for Maternity Photos with Another Woman novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: Half a Million

Marianne asked to see me in her office, and I told her the showroom.

"It's Wednesday afternoon," I said on the phone. "You'll have customers. I'd like them to hear us."

She was quiet for a moment.

"As you like, dear. Three o'clock."

The Kessling Flooring showroom on Moorland Road was a long bright hall of oak and slate and herringbone.

A sample wall ran across the back.

Four couples were looking at tile.

Six salespeople in navy blazers stood at their posts, and I knew three of them by name from company picnics.

Marianne came out of the office door in her camel coat and a cream silk scarf.

She walked straight down the middle of the hall to me, smiling, with a leather folder in her hand.

"You look lovely," she said. "Motherhood suits you."

"Say what you came to say."

"Here, then." She stopped on a display of wide-plank walnut and opened the folder against her arm. "Five hundred thousand dollars. A three-bedroom house in Shorewood, in your name, paid in full. You'd never need to scrub another stranger's teeth."

I said nothing.

"In return you attend the gala on Rupert's arm. You stand beside him at seven-fifteen while I make a small announcement. You sign this agreement." She turned a page. "The baby is born at St. Luke's under my doctor, and the child's primary residence is the Kessling home. And you never discuss the medical matter again with anyone."

"The medical matter."

"Your fertility treatment. It was an unfortunate time for everyone."

A salesman near the counter had stopped pretending to work.

I took a step forward, onto the walnut, so that I was a foot from her face.

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