Chapter 3
Nate was still waiting for my answer.
I didn’t give him one.
I took my coat from Dana and lifted the yellow quilt from the gift basket.
The guests stepped aside without a word. No one stopped me. No one apologized.
Nate caught up with me at the door.
“Mara, you can’t leave now.”
“You just told me you have a four-year-old daughter. What am I supposed to stay for? To reassure everyone that I can accept this?”
“I never meant to hurt you.”
“But you did.”
Once we were in the car, Dana asked, “My place, or home first?”
“Home. I need my hospital bag.”
Nate arrived before us.
The crib in the living room still had no sheets.
The nursery door stood open, showing the animal prints, the rocking chair, and the tiny towels I had folded the week before.
“I know today was awful,” Nate said from the kitchen island. “But you can’t let anger force me out of Maisie’s life.”
“When did I ask you to leave her life?”
I set the quilt on the sofa and opened the notes app on my phone.
“Starting tonight, you don’t stay here. You do not bring Maisie, Elise, or relatives who speak for you into this house. You don’t make decisions about my appointments, the birth, or what happens after the baby arrives.”
“What are you writing?”
“So you can’t claim tomorrow that you didn’t hear me.”
“This is our home.”
“It’s my home and my child’s home. Did you ask before you promised Maisie she could stay here?”
He looked away.
“She keeps asking whether she can stay after her sister is born. I told her she could. She’s already picked out a toy for the baby.”
“Did you ask me first?”
“She’s a child, Mara.”
“Exactly. She believed you. You made a promise with a home that wasn’t yours to offer.”
“She’s been hidden for four years. She shouldn’t feel like she’s something shameful.”
“She should never have been hidden. That does not make me responsible for the life you planned around her.”
“I didn’t plan your life.”
I looked at the nursery.
“You brought her to my baby shower. You put my mother’s quilt around her shoulders. You told her she could come here. You had already decided I would make room.”
“Elise isn’t moving in. She won’t interfere with our marriage. We can work through this.”
“Your version of working through it is letting me have the baby first, then deciding when Maisie comes over and when I’m meant to be ready.”
“I’m trying to protect everyone.”
“You’re protecting yourself.”
His expression hardened.
“I’m not choosing between my daughters.”
“I didn’t ask you to.”
“You’re forcing me to give Maisie up.”
“I’m asking you to leave this house and stop building your lies around me and this baby. Whether you are Maisie’s father is your responsibility. Whether you remain my husband is my choice.”
He stared at me.
“You’re pregnant. Tonight isn’t the time for decisions. Sleep on it. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
Whenever Nate refused to face a consequence, he pushed it to the next day.
I called Dana.
“I’m staying at your apartment tonight.”
“I’m already downstairs.”
Nate covered my phone with his hand. “You can’t just move out.”
“Move your hand.”
He did.
I packed clothes, my prenatal records, my hospital bag, and toiletries. I left everything in the nursery. The yellow quilt went on top of my suitcase.
“You’ll regret this,” Nate said from the bedroom door.
“You thought I couldn’t leave. That’s why you made promises for me.”
As I rolled my suitcase out, he said, “Maisie is still coming next weekend. She thinks this is her sister’s home too.”
“Then tell her you promised her a home that wasn’t yours to give.”
It was after nine when I reached Dana’s apartment.
She took my suitcase to the guest room and went to warm milk in the kitchen.
I folded the yellow quilt beside the pillow.
It was the only thing I had taken from that house for my daughter.
My phone buzzed.
Nate had posted a photo from that afternoon.
Maisie stood beneath the balloon arch, smiling with the yellow quilt around her shoulders. Nate crouched beside her, a hand at her back.
The caption read:
Big sister duties start soon.
Congratulations were already filling the comments.
He hadn’t mentioned me.
But he had already assigned my unborn child another sister.