My husband’s mistress got pregnant before I did

"Years?" I repeated.

Bella nodded, eyes wet and wide. "That's what he said."

I turned to Gale. "Is that what you told her?"

"Penny, stop."

"We had sex *three weeks ago*, Gale. On your birthday. You cried after. You said you were lucky to have me."

A nurse dropped a clipboard. Somebody's toddler started laughing.

"Why?" My voice broke apart. "I was sticking needles in my stomach every night. I was counting days on a calendar. I was praying in that bathroom. And you were making a baby with *her*?"

"Enough."

His hand clamped around my upper arm. He didn't drag me so much as steer me, fast and hard, past the vending machines and through a gray door marked STAIRS. It slammed behind us. The sound bounced off the concrete.

He let go of my arm and shoved both hands into his hair.

"You want the truth? Fine." He paced two steps, then turned on me. "Six months. We've been together six months."

Six months. I did the math without wanting to. Two embryo transfers. One Christmas.

"You told me you'd love me even if we never had kids."

"And I meant it." He said it like *I* was the unreasonable one. "But I'm thirty-eight, Penny. My father keeps asking who takes over the company. The board keeps asking. Every dinner, every holiday, somebody asks." He spread his hands. "I just wanted a child. You should understand the pressure a man is under."

I stared at him.

I had pictured this man crying over a sonogram. I had bought a silver frame.

"I'm pregnant," I whispered.

He blinked.

"I'm pregnant, Gale." Tears ran into the corners of my mouth, salty and warm. "Twelve weeks. That's what was on the floor. That's why I was here. I wanted to surprise you."

For one second, his face went soft. Open. Almost scared.

Then it closed like a door.

"Convenient," he said.

"What?"

"Seven years of nothing, and the day you catch me with Bella, you're suddenly pregnant." His laugh was short and dry. "Come on, Penny. You're better than this."

"I have the scan in my purse. I have Dr. Lindqvist's notes. Call her!"

"I'm not doing this in a stairwell." He tugged his cuffs straight, fixed his watch. The Patek. *My* Patek. "Go home. Calm down. We'll talk tonight like adults."

"Like adults," I repeated.

He was already pushing the door open. Through the gap, I glimpsed Bella in her pink sweater, waiting for him like a puppy.

The door swung shut.

I sat down on the cold step and pressed both hands against my belly. *Hold on,* I told the baby. *Please. Just hold on.*

My phone buzzed.

An unknown number. A single photo.

Gale, eyes closed, lips pressed to Bella's forehead. Soft. Tender.

Behind them was a cream headboard with gold stitching. Lavender curtains. A framed print of the Amalfi coast.

I knew those curtains. I had sewn the hems myself.

It was our bedroom.

A second message came through.

*He says your sheets are scratchy. lol.*

---

I didn't remember the drive home.

I remember the study. The locked bottom drawer of his desk. The letter opener I jammed into it until the lock cracked.

Bank statements. Tax forms. Then a thick envelope with a real estate logo.

A deed. Four bedrooms on Willow Creek Lane, out past the reservoir. Purchased eight months ago. Before Bella, then.

A brass key was taped inside the envelope.

---

The villa sat at the end of a gravel road, white and quiet. The key turned on the first try.

Bella was everywhere.

Framed on the hallway walls. Above the fireplace. Propped on the nightstand in a bedroom bigger than ours.

I picked one up. Bella on a beach. Then another. Bella at a café. Bella laughing in the snow.

And slowly, my skin went cold.

The same white sundress with blue cornflowers. The same red wool coat with oversized buttons. The same thin gold anklet. Her hair parted on the left in every single shot, even though at the hospital it was parted on the right.

I had seen these clothes before.

In a shoebox in our attic, years ago. A box Gale had snatched out of my hands and burned in the backyard grill while I watched.

One photo had fallen out before he got to it. A dark-haired girl in a cornflower sundress, squinting at the sun.

*Who's that?* I'd asked.

*Nobody,* he'd said. Then, later, drunk on our second anniversary, he'd said her name into my shoulder like it hurt.

*Amy.*

The girl who left him at twenty-three. The one who vanished without a word. The one he never, ever talked about.

I set the frame down. My hands had gone numb.

Bella wasn't his great love. Bella was a costume. A girl he'd dressed up like a ghost.

And me?

He'd never once asked me to wear a cornflower dress.

I wasn't even good enough to be a copy.

---

At nine o'clock, the garage door rumbled.

I was sitting at the kitchen island when they came in. Gale carried two suitcases. Bella carried a throw pillow embroidered with a stork.

"Good, you're up." Gale set the bags down. "This saves time."

"Get her out of my house."

"Penny." He sighed, the patient-father sigh. "Bella's high-risk. Her blood pressure's been up. She shouldn't be alone right now."

"She has a villa on Willow Creek Lane."

Bella's head turned. Gale's eyes narrowed, just slightly.

"You went through my desk."

"You went through my *life*."

"The villa's too far from the hospital." He picked the suitcases back up. "She'll take the master bedroom. It has the bigger bathroom. You can move into the guest room for now."

I actually smiled. My face felt like plastic.

"No."

"It's temporary."

"No, Gale. She is not sleeping in the bed I picked. Under the curtains I sewed. She already has a photo shoot in there, doesn't she?"

Bella hugged her stork pillow. "Penny, I didn't mean—"

"Don't."

Gale stepped close. Close enough that I could smell her vanilla perfume on his collar.

"Let me make this simple," he said quietly. "I bought this house. My name is on the deed. Not yours. You don't get to decide who lives here."

The words landed one by one, like stones.

I opened my mouth.

The doorbell rang.

All three of us turned.

It rang again. Unhurried. Like whoever it was had all the time in the world.

Gale frowned and crossed the foyer. He pulled the door open.

A woman stood on the porch in a long red dress, the silk shining under the porch light. Dark hair. Parted on the left.

She smiled.

"Gale," she said. "Long time no see."

Behind me, Bella's pillow hit the floor.

The woman's eyes slid past him—to Bella's belly, then to mine.

"I heard you're going to be a father?"

Gale's hand slipped off the doorknob.

"Amy," he breathed.