You Had This Divorce Coming novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Party She Wasn't Invited To
On her daughter's one-month day Elise follows a slip of the tongue to a hotel and finds her husband carrying another woman's baby, and her own family's heirloom box on the gift table.
Elise Harrow was holding her one-month-old daughter in the clinic lobby when she called her husband.
"Calvin, today is her one-month day. Can you come and take us home?"
She kept her voice steady, but a little hope got through anyway.
"Something came up," Calvin Kenyon said. "I'll send the driver."
He had missed the birth. He had missed the whole first month. Now the month was over, and he still could not make it.
Her chest ached, and she held back her tears. "All right. I understand."
"Ellie, you've always been independent. You gave birth alone and never complained. Keep it up. You're the best mom."
He hung up.
It was the voice he used on junior designers at the office.
Before she could put the phone down, it rang again.
It was one of Calvin's oldest friends, a man who had stood up at their wedding.
"Ellie, I can't make the baby's one-month party at the Larkspur at noon. Sorry about that. Congratulations on the baby boy!"
Elise stood very still. A party? A baby boy?
"What party?" she began, but he had already hung up.
Her phone chimed with a photo of an expensive baby gift set and the words: Can't make it, but this is for the little guy!
A moment later, the photo and the message were deleted.
A voice message followed. "Wrong chat, Ellie. Forget all that. Sorry, sorry, sorry."
Then came a dozen apology stickers, one after another.
Nobody sends a dozen stickers over nothing.
Elise looked at the screen for a long time.
The driver pulled up at the curb a few minutes later.
"Mr. Kenyon said to take you straight home, ma'am," he said. "He said you shouldn't stop anywhere. You need your rest."
Calvin had never worried about her rest before.
At home she put the baby in the nanny's arms. She told no one where she was going.
She sat on the edge of the bed with her coat on and read the friend's message three times.
Baby boy. One-month party. The Larkspur, at noon.
Her husband had never given her a straight answer in a year, so she decided to go and find the answer herself.
At eleven she stood outside the top banquet hall at the Larkspur Hotel in a black down coat, a hat and a mask.
Every step had pulled at her surgical scar all the way up the lobby stairs.
The doors were crowded with guests.
A large poster stood beside them: Baby Miles Fairchild's One-Month Party.
She did not know a single face in the crowd.
A man in a gray cap stood near the back doors, filming the guests on his phone. Nobody stopped him.
Elise felt her shoulders loosen. Maybe she had frightened herself over nothing.
She turned to leave.
"Careful, you're still recovering," said a voice behind her. "Let me carry him. I've got a big gift ready for him later."
She knew that voice.
She turned around.
A short distance away, Calvin was taking a plump baby boy out of a woman's arms.
That was her husband, the man who had vanished for a month.
Elise could not move.
The woman beside him spoke in a soft, girlish voice. "Cal, you've been so good to Miles and me. You stayed with me the whole pregnancy and cooked for me. You waited outside the delivery room. You even looked after me every day while I healed. When Nolan gets home, he'll thank you for everything."
"You're my cousin, Selena," Calvin said. "Nolan is my best friend, and he's overseas. Looking after you is the least I can do."
Selena Fairchild. Elise had heard that name for years.
Selena was the aunt's adopted daughter, raised in Calvin's family from an orphanage. She had married Nolan Fairchild before Elise ever married Calvin, and the two of them had moved abroad.
Nolan was on a confidential engineering project. Calvin had told her so himself, many times.
So Calvin had not been busy with work for the past year. He had been busy with Selena.
Laughing, the two of them carried the baby into the banquet hall.
Elise's phone buzzed in her pocket.
Calvin: [Keep it up. Be a strong mother. I'll finish work tonight and be home tomorrow.]
She read it, then looked at the doors where he had just walked in with his hand at Selena's back.
She scrolled up through the older messages.
Calvin: [You're eight months pregnant and you still finished the Harbor Crown Tower drawings on schedule. You're amazing.]
Calvin: [Five months already? Pregnancy looks easy on you. You're not like those women who act delicate.]
Calvin: [No morning sickness, so you can handle a heavier workload. Keep it up. I trust your judgment most.]
There had been morning sickness. There had been swollen feet, high blood pressure and fainting spells.
She had gone through all of it and never taken more than two days off. His praise had kept her going.
Now she saw what the praise was for. He had treated her like a good employee. He had never once treated her like a wife.
And she had just watched him hold another woman by the waist, gentle and attentive.
He knew how to care for someone. It simply had never been her.
Elise took off her mask and put it in her pocket.
She wanted to see what her husband had prepared for another woman's child.
She followed the guests through the doors.
On the gift table by the entrance stood a dark green lacquer box with a gold clasp.
She knew that box.
Three months ago she had locked it in the safe at Calvin's company, and nobody else had the key.
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