Chapter 3 - The Nursery Built on Spite and Treason
The next morning,
I didn’t call Gavin out,
I didn’t scream,
and I didn’t pack a suitcase to run home to my parents.
Instead,
at eight o’clock sharp,
I walked into the downtown law office of Arthur Vance,
a seventy-year-old estate and family litigation attorney who had been my grandfather’s closest friend and trusted counsel for four decades.
Arthur was a quiet,
stoic man with steel-gray hair and eyes that had seen every species of human greed known to the American legal system.
When I laid the printed emails,
the text logs,
the ultrasound photo,
and the forged refinance documents across his mahogany desk,
his jaw tightened until the tendons in his neck looked like taut wire.
“This is criminal fraud,
Tessa,”
Arthur said,
his voice low and gravelly,
tapping a blunt finger against the Oakhaven LLC operating agreement.
“If you sign this Quitclaim rider,
you extinguish your sole premarital ownership and deed fifty percent of your home equity to an entity controlled by your husband and this woman.
Once it’s filed with the county recorder,
unraveling it in divorce court would take three years,
hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees,
and there is no guarantee a judge wouldn't force a partition sale.”
“I’m not signing it,
Arthur,”
I said,
my voice devoid of emotion.
“I want to destroy them.
I want them legally castrated,
financially ruined,
and publicly exposed so thoroughly that neither of them can ever show their faces in this town again.”
Arthur looked at me over the rim of his reading glasses,
a slow,
grim smile touching the corners of his mouth.
“Then we don’t file the divorce petition today,
Tessa.
If you file today,
they hide behind their lawyers,
they delete the digital evidence,
and Gavin claims he was confused about the paperwork.
We let them think the trap is working.
We let them walk straight into the center of the web.”
For the next eleven days,
I lived inside a waking nightmare,
acting the part of the devoted,
exhausted,
docile pregnant wife.
Every morning,
Gavin would kiss me goodbye,
reminding me to take my iron supplements,
promising he was working late at the engineering firm to build a cash cushion for our family.
In reality,
he was spending his lunch breaks meeting Maren at coffee shops,
discussing paint swatches for what they called ‘their new home.’
Maren,
in her boundless arrogance and psychopathic audacity,
visited me almost every single day.
She would let herself in through the kitchen door with the spare key I had given her three years ago,
carrying iced decaf lattes,
wearing a sympathetic,
sisterly smile that made my skin crawl with visceral revulsion.
“You look so tired,
honey,”
she would say,
placing her warm,
treacherous hand directly against the curve of my belly,
pretending to feel for the baby’s heartbeat.
“You just sit on the sofa and rest.
Let me help you fold the baby onesies.
Let me finish painting the stencils in the nursery.”
I sat there on the glider chair,
sipping the latte she had bought,
watching her slender fingers handle my daughter’s clothes,
knowing that those same hands had been touching my husband’s body hours earlier.
I watched her paint little golden stars across the nursery ceiling,
smiling to herself,
undoubtedly imagining the day when I would be evicted,
and she would move her own baby into the very room she was decorating.
One afternoon,
while she was in the bathroom,
I checked the baby registry account on my phone and noticed something strange.
Several high-end items that had been marked as ‘purchased’—a designer leather diaper bag,
a motorized bassinet,
and an Italian car seat—had been shipped to an unfamiliar address in the neighboring town.
I ran the address through a county parcel search;
it was a two-bedroom townhouse leased under the name of Maren Wallace.
She was using my baby shower registry,
using the discount codes and gift cards my aunts and coworkers had contributed to,
to furnish her own secret nursery for Gavin’s bastard child.
The sheer,
breathtaking vulgarity of it was almost impressive.
She didn’t just want my husband;
she wanted my aesthetic,
my nursery,
my social circle,
and my home.
She was attempting to execute a total identity theft of my life,
stepping into my shoes while I was still wearing them.
When she came out of the bathroom,
touching her stomach delicately through her cardigan,
she looked at me and said,
“You know,
Tess,
after the shower on Sunday,
you should really let Gavin take you away for a weekend at the coast.
You two need time alone before the madness starts.
I can stay here,
feed the cat,
and oversee the furniture delivery.”
She wanted me out of the house.
She wanted the keys,
the access,
and the unsupervised opportunity to begin moving her belongings into the guest suite.
“That’s so sweet of you,
Maren,”
I said,
smiling into my cup,
feeling a surge of adrenaline that washed away the last traces of fear.
“You’ve thought of absolutely everything,
haven’t you?
I don’t know what I would do without you in my life.”
“You’ll never have to find out,
Tess,”
she replied,
leaning down to hug me,
her expensive perfume filling my nostrils,
smelling of lavender,
vanilla,
and pure,
unadulterated rot.
“We’re family,
forever.”
I hugged her back,
patting her shoulder gently,
thinking to myself:
Just wait until Sunday,
May you like
sister.
Just wait until Sunday.
