Chapter 2 - THE PARTY I WASN'T SUPPOSED TO SEE
Nine days earlier, my mother-in-law sent me a text: Family dinner. Seven. Please don't make this awkward.
That was Diane Mercer's version of an invitation. She'd disliked me from the beginning, mostly because I laughed when I was nervous and once put my feet on her white couch.
I almost didn't go. Alex and I had been living in different rooms for two months. We still ate at the same counter, sometimes, staring at our phones as though we were waiting for a third person to speak.
But I went. I bought lemon bars from the grocery store and peeled the clearance sticker off the box in the car.
At seven-fourteen, I opened Diane's backyard gate.
Pink and blue balloons floated above the patio. A long table held cupcakes. A sign read LITTLE SUTTON, BIG SURPRISE. People in pale clothes stood in a half circle, phones raised.
Paige was at the center, her blond hair curled around a red bow.
Alex stood beside her.
For one strange second I thought I'd walked into the wrong house.
Then I heard Diane say, "Erin?"
Heads turned. Someone lowered a phone. My lemon bars were suddenly heavy.
"What's going on?" I asked.
Alex crossed the lawn toward me, and I saw the terror on his face before he replaced it with anger.
"You shouldn't have come."
"Your mother asked me to."
He looked back at Diane. She held a glass of sparkling water against her chest and said nothing.
"It's complicated," Alex said.
"Whose baby?"
He exhaled through his nose. "Mine."
The word didn't explode. It landed. A fork scraped a plate somewhere behind him.
"How long?"
"Erin, not here."
I stared at Paige, who looked down at her belly and then up at me. She didn't look surprised. That was almost worse.
Alex steered me toward the kitchen. His hand hovered behind my back without touching. I stopped in the doorway when I heard Paige following us.
"She deserves the truth," Paige said.
"I'll tell her after the reveal," Alex snapped. "Then I'll hand Erin the divorce papers. I'm not hiding my child."
He said it as if courage had finally arrived, dressed like betrayal.
"You brought the papers to a baby shower?" I asked.
He looked at me, at my grocery-store dessert, and seemed to notice me for the first time that night.
"We've been over for months."
"You forgot to tell me."
My voice broke on the last word. I hated that. I wanted a sharp, devastating line. What came out was, "I made lemon bars."
Diane turned away.
Behind us, someone fired the confetti cannon. Pink paper blew through the open kitchen door and stuck to my wet cheek.
I left without my bag. Halfway down the street I remembered the white gift box in my car, the one I'd meant to give Alex on our anniversary. I drove until I couldn't see straight, pulled into a gas station, and sat with the box in my lap.
Inside was a tiny pair of knitted socks.
May you like
And beneath the tissue paper was a pregnancy test I hadn't had the nerve to show him.
