After My Husband Swapped Our Baby for His Mistress's Son

I opened my mouth to answer. Flynn held up one hand.

"Wait. I'm not done." He sat back down and crossed his legs. He looked almost bored. "You should know what you're really fighting for."

"I know what I'm fighting for."

"Do you?" He tilted his head. "Brodie's not yours."

The jazz kept playing. A saxophone climbed up high, then slid back down.

"Don't," I said.

"Remember the C-section? You lost a lot of blood. You were out for almost a day." He said it like he was reading a recipe. Smooth. Practiced. "Elyse delivered the same week. Mom knew a nurse. When you woke up, there was a baby boy in your arms. You cried. It was honestly kind of cute."

My hands were flat on the desk. I kept them there.

"Where is she?"

He blinked. "Who?"

"You said Brodie isn't mine. So I had a baby. Where is she?"

Something flickered in his face. He'd expected me to scream about Brodie first. He'd planned for that.

"A girl. Six pounds something." He shrugged. "I owed some people a lot of money, Layne. She was gone before you woke up. Debt cleared."

"Who has her?"

"That's not part of the deal."

"Who has her, Flynn?"

"Her name's Brynleigh, if that helps." He smiled. "The buyer picked it. Not me."

Then he leaned forward. Just a little. The same way he leans toward his ring light. Waiting for the perfect shot. Waiting for me to break so he could watch.

I gave him nothing.

I bent down and picked my cracked phone off the floor. I slid it into my pocket.

"I need the bathroom," I said.

"Take your time." He turned back to his video. "You've got until Monday."

---

I locked the guest bathroom door. I turned the faucet all the way up. The water roared into the sink.

Then I came apart.

I pressed a towel over my mouth and slid down the cabinet until I hit the cold tile. My whole body shook. No sound came out. Not one.

I saw it all at once. *You Are My Sunshine*, sung a thousand times in the dark. Sandwiches cut into stars. The thermometer at 3 a.m., 103 and climbing, his hot little hand in mine. The red-eye from Austin. Every single one of those nights, I gave to a boy who wasn't mine.

And somewhere out there was a girl. Ten years old now. Ten birthdays I didn't know about.

Did anyone sing to her?

Did anyone hold her when she was sick?

I bit the towel until my jaw ached.

The water kept running. I let it.

Forty minutes later, I stood up. I splashed cold water on my face. I looked in the mirror. My skin was dry. My eyes were clear and still, like a lake in the dead of winter.

I turned off the faucet.

I walked down the hall. Past Brodie's room. I heard the beeps of his game through the door. I didn't stop.

Outside, the air was wet and sharp. At the curb, there was a storm drain with a rusty iron grate. I twisted my ring one last time. It came off easier than I thought it would.

I dropped it. I heard a tiny clink, then nothing.

I kept walking.

Chelsea's car was still idling in the driveway. The headlights cut through the mist. I got in and shut the door.

"Layne. What did he—"

"Drive," I said. "I'll tell you at your place."

She looked at my bare finger. Then she drove.

---

Chelsea's apartment was small and smelled like coffee. She tossed a blanket at me. I didn't use it. We sat at her kitchen table with two laptops open, and I told her everything.

When I said the word *sold*, she set her tumbler down. Very slowly. Very carefully. Like it might explode.

"Okay," she said. "He's going to prison."

"First he's going to try to empty everything."

"Then we move faster." She cracked her knuckles. "Give me your logins. All of them."

We worked until the sky outside went from black to gray.

The transfers to Elyse came first. Ten years. Every month. Chelsea added them up and turned the screen toward me.

Eight hundred and forty thousand dollars.

Then Virginia's card. Cashmere. Gold bracelets. A spa week in Scottsdale I'd never heard of. A "medical consultation" that turned out to be a jewelry store.

"She told me she needed help with her heart medication," I said.

"Her heart's fine," Chelsea said. "It's made of gold. Eighteen karat."

Then she found the last piece. A company called Hearth & Home Media LLC. Registered to a P.O. box in Tacoma. Every sponsorship payment Flynn ever got went there. Kitchen brands. Meal kits. A mattress company.

Not one dollar ever touched our accounts.

"He told me the sponsorships barely paid for the ring light," I said.

"He lied." Chelsea didn't look up. "Shocking."

At four in the morning, she called a partner at her firm. She talked fast and low, all legal words. *Ex parte. Dissipation of assets. Irreparable harm.* Then she hung up.

"Emergency motion to freeze everything," she said. "It gets filed at seven. A judge sees it by noon. After that, if he moves a single dime, it's contempt of court."

"And the pictures?"

"Let me worry about the pictures." She didn't look worried. She looked hungry.

My cracked phone buzzed on the table. One message. From Flynn.

*Monday, babe. Don't make me wait.*

I didn't answer.

I pulled a sticky note off Chelsea's pad. I wrote one word on it and pressed it to the edge of my screen.

*Brynleigh.*

Then I started counting again.