Pushed Overboard Pregnant, I Crashed My Husband's Wedding novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Nursery

Hallie slips into her own house for her passport, finds Whitney's clothes in her closet and the crib sent back, and records Wesley and Whitney admitting the fake pregnancy before Mason's phone rings.

Mason parked his truck at the end of our road with the lights off.

"Ten minutes," he said. "Passport, wallet, anything with your name on it. Nothing else."

"The pearls too."

"Nothing else, Hallie."

He gave me an old phone with a cracked corner.

"My number's the only one in it. If I call, you leave."

I nodded and slid out of the truck in his gray sweatshirt and a pair of borrowed boots two sizes too big.

The house was dark.

It was the house Wesley and I had bought three years ago, white clapboard with a porch swing and a nursery I had painted myself.

I found the spare key under the fake rock by the steps, where it had been since the day we moved in.

The alarm panel beeped at me in the hall.

I typed my birthday.

The panel beeped again, red.

My stomach dropped, and I tried the number Wesley used for everything, his own birthday.

Red again.

I stood there with my finger over the keypad and thought of the one other date I knew by heart.

I typed Whitney's birthday.

The panel went green.

He had changed our code to my best friend's birthday, and he had done it before I was even in the ground.

I did not cry.

I went upstairs in my socks.

Our bedroom closet was open.

Half of it was still mine, and the other half was full of dresses I did not own, pastel and soft, with Whitney's perfume in the fabric.

My side had been pushed to the back to make room.

In the bathroom, her toothbrush stood in my cup.

I took my wallet from the dresser.

The jewelry box in the top drawer had been emptied, except for my passport, still at the bottom where I had left it.

I took that too.

The pearls were not the only thing gone.

My grandmother's ring and the little gold bracelet from my father were gone too.

I walked down the hall to the nursery and opened the door.

The crib was gone.

The yellow paint was still on the walls, and the rocking chair was still by the window, but the crib and the changing table had vanished.

Three flat boxes leaned against the wall, with a delivery label stuck on the front.

*Return to sender.*

Someone had ordered a refund on my daughter's crib before I was even officially dead.

My hand went to my belly, and she rolled under it.

"I know," I whispered. "I know, baby."

Headlights swept across the nursery window.

I froze with my hand still on my stomach.

A car door closed outside, and then a second one.

Voices came across the lawn, a man's and a woman's, laughing low.

I knew both of them.

I ran into the nursery closet and pulled the door to a crack.

The front door opened downstairs.

The alarm panel beeped once, green.

"Tomorrow you're going to be perfect," Whitney said.

It was her real voice, the one she used when it was just us, without the sob in it.

"I'm always perfect," Wesley said. "Did you see my father's face at the dock?"

"He couldn't stop smiling."

They came up the stairs.

I took Mason's phone out of the boot, opened the voice recorder and hit the red button.

I had never done a brave thing in my life before Saturday.

My hands were completely steady.

They stopped in the hall outside the nursery door.

"Look at this room," Whitney said. "Gross. It's still yellow."

"We'll paint it Monday."

"Wes, I'm sick of the padding already. It itches."

"Three more days."

"You said that Tuesday."

"And I'll say it again Thursday." He laughed, and I heard the kiss. "Nobody questions a pregnant bride, Whit. That's the whole point of it."

My knees went weak in the closet.

She was not pregnant.

She had never been pregnant.

She was wearing a pad under her dress to stand beside him, and she had been wearing it on the news.

"What about Hallie's mother?" Whitney asked. "She was a mess today."

"She'll be a mess on Saturday, too, and she'll sit in the front row. It makes for better pictures."

"And the baby?"

"What baby?"

Nobody in the hall said anything.

Then Wesley said, very softly, "She went quiet, Whit. The water's cold this time of year. They go quiet and it's over."

*They.*

I put my fist over my mouth.

"I wish you hadn't kissed her first," Whitney said. "That part gave me chills."

"She likes being kissed on the forehead," Wesley said. "I wanted her calm."

In my hand, the phone buzzed once and lit the closet white.

It lit my fingers, my knees and the dust on the floor.

The ringer was on full volume.

*MASON*, the screen said.

It rang again, loud, in the silent house.

Out in the hall, nobody moved.

Then Wesley said, in a voice I had never heard him use, "Did you hear that?"

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