Chapter 1
I was pregnant, and so was his mistress. He went to her appointments while I registered, waited in line, and listened to my baby's heartbeat alone. Then I had a DNA report faked so the child would not be his.
*****
It took 20 minutes to get the divorce decree from start to finish.
Richard Lane's hand did not shake when he signed.
Mine did not shake either.
The staff member said, "Congratulations, you're all done."
The word she used was congratulations.
Apparently, a divorce got congratulations, too.
I stood up, picked up my bag, and turned for the door.
"Emma," he called out from behind me.
I stopped.
"Why didn't you tell me you were pregnant?" he asked.
I turned around.
"Because you never asked," I said.
"You..." he started.
"Richard," I cut him off, "you didn't even know when my prenatal checkup was. Did you really expect me to tell you?"
He had nothing to say to that.
I walked away.
My phone buzzed as I stepped out of the courthouse.
It was a text from the hospital. Hospital: [Ms. Emma Shaw, your prenatal appointment for next Tuesday is confirmed.]
I glanced at it and put the phone back in my bag.
Then I looked up at the sky.
The sky was blue.
It was a good day to start over.
But there was something I had not told him.
That day was not an ordinary prenatal appointment.
That day was the amniocentesis.
And the results were going to decide a great deal.
*****
The sky had been just as blue the day Richard and I got married.
That was five years ago.
Richard actually cried at our wedding.
He was six feet one, and he stood up there with his tears landing on the back of my hand, hot enough to feel.
"Emma, you're the only one I'll ever love."
More than three hundred people saw it happen.
Our mother were crying.
I didn't shed a single tear.
I smiled at him and said one thing.
"Richard, remember what you said today."
Did he remember?
He did not.
He kept it for five years.
Or he only kept it for three.
The last two years belonged to somebody else.
There was one detail from that wedding that nobody else caught.
When we exchanged rings, the officiant asked him, "Do you take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife?"
He said, "I do."
His answer carried through the whole hall, and everybody heard it.
But he didn't look at me.
He was looking at the third row.
I didn't think anything of it at the time.
Looking back, his college friends were sitting in the third row.
One of them was a girl named Grace Miller.