The Bride He Replaced novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Locked Out

The keys don't work, her suitcases are already packed, and Marguerite offers money to disappear until Bea arrives with the viral clip.

"Then say what's on page four," I told him. "Say it loud enough for the third row."

Miles's jaw tightened.

He would not say it with two hundred people looking at us.

That was the only answer I needed.

I turned and walked back up the aisle.

Guests leaned out of the way of my shoulders.

A woman in a green hat whispered, "Honey, is it true?"

"Every word," I said, and kept walking.

The quartet kept playing something slow and expensive behind me.

Nobody stopped me at the doors.

I drove home with my hands shaking on the wheel and the sonogram on the passenger seat.

Miles and I lived in a condo downtown.

I had moved in with him in April, leaving the flat above my old landlady's kitchen.

The doorman stood up when he saw me come through the lobby.

He was holding two suitcases, one in each hand, and he looked at the floor.

"Miss Draycott," he said. "Mr. Teasdale's office called. They asked me to give you these."

Both bags had luggage tags on the handles.

The tags were dated Tuesday.

Miles had packed my life three days before he stood in the bridal suite and asked me to be reasonable.

I swiped my key card at the elevator.

The light stayed red.

I swiped it again, and again.

"They changed the access this morning, miss," the doorman said. "I'm sorry. I'm not allowed to override it."

"It's my home."

"I know." He swallowed. "I know it is."

I took the suitcases and went out onto the sidewalk.

A black town car was pulling up to the curb.

Marguerite Teasdale stepped out of the back seat with her purse held in both hands, in her navy suit, and not a hair of her silver bob had moved.

The ceremony had not even started. She had left her son's wedding to find me.

"Hannah," she said. "Let's be sensible and have this conversation in the car."

"Here is fine."

She looked once at the delivery rider across the street who had lifted his phone.

"Very well." She opened her purse and took out a cream envelope. "A hundred and fifty thousand dollars, paid today. A trust for the child, in Miles's name, with the tuition covered. Your own place, in any city you choose."

"And what do you get?"

"You sign a statement. You say you were confused and unwell and made an unfortunate scene."

I looked at the envelope in her hand.

I had once thought this woman was shy.

I thought that every Christmas when she smiled at me over her plate and said nothing, and I decided the silence was kindness.

"My son isn't a line on a waiver," I said.

"He is a Teasdale, dear. He will be provided for either way." She spoke gently. "The only question is whether you are in his life or outside it."

"Is that a threat?"

"It's the price of a quiet life. I'd take it."

"Show me page four."

"I don't carry it."

"Then you read it to me."

"I'd rather not," Marguerite said. "It would only upset you."

A bus went past and the sidewalk shook.

My stomach turned over, and the baby shifted low against my hip.

I thought of Camilla's hand on my veil that morning, steady and kind.

I thought of the tags dated Tuesday.

Everyone had agreed, and every one of them had planned it without me.

"No," I said.

Marguerite's mouth did not move, but her eyes cooled.

"You will regret that by Friday."

"I regret every form I signed for your son. I'll start there."

I picked up the suitcases.

They were heavier than they should have been, and I almost went down on one knee on the pavement.

A car horn gave two short beeps, and a rusted blue station wagon swerved up behind the town car.

The driver's window came down.

"Hannah Rose Draycott," said Bea Moran, in the voice she had once used on night-shift interns. "Get in this car right now."

Marguerite stepped back from the curb.

Bea reached over and shoved the passenger door open for me, and I threw the suitcases into the back and climbed in.

She had her phone propped against the steering wheel.

"I was in the chapel parking lot," she said. "I came for the free cake. Honey, I filmed some of it, and so did half the guests."

She turned the phone toward me.

My own face filled the screen, white and pregnant, holding up the sonogram.

Under it was a caption, and it had already been shared six hundred thousand times.

It read: Jealous ex crashes the wedding and fakes a pregnancy.

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