Chapter 1 - “OUR?”
By four twenty-two on Thanksgiving afternoon, I had already decided that if my husband brought his mistress into my house, I would not scream.
I would not throw wine.
I would not give anyone the satisfaction of watching a thirty-two-weeks-pregnant woman lose control beside a turkey she had been awake since six that morning to cook.
What I had not decided was what I would do instead.
Then Daniel opened the front door.
And Jade Prescott walked in behind him.
I remember absurd things about that moment.
The little bell tied to the wreath moved when the door shut.
Daniel carried a bottle of Burgundy we already had three bottles of in the cellar.
Jade wore dark green, the exact shade of the garland I had spent an hour arranging over the mantel.
And my daughter kicked me so hard beneath my ribs that I had to press one hand against the kitchen counter.
Daniel smiled as if nothing in the room had changed.
“Maggie.”
He kissed my cheek.
Not my mouth.
He had stopped kissing my mouth in public sometime around June.
“This is Jade. Her plans fell through.”
Jade gave me the strained smile of a woman who knew perfectly well that her plans had not fallen through.
“I hope I’m not intruding.”
Behind her, my mother-in-law, Rosemary Hollis, put down her wineglass.
Rosemary was sixty-eight and possessed the unnerving stillness of someone who had spent most of her life among men who mistook volume for authority.
Her eyes moved from Jade to Daniel.
Then to me.
Nobody spoke.
So I did.
“Of course not.”
Daniel’s shoulders loosened.
That was my first mistake of the evening.
I had made him comfortable.
For eleven years, I had been very good at making Daniel Hollis comfortable.
When his construction company nearly failed, I made phone calls he never knew about.
When his father spent Thanksgiving in intensive care, I stayed beside Harold while Daniel left to meet investors.
When I miscarried our second pregnancy, I cried in the shower because Daniel said he had an early meeting and needed sleep.
When I got pregnant again, I reduced my hours at the hospital because Daniel said we could finally afford for me to “take things easier.”
Taking things easier turned out to mean managing his mother’s appointments, the holidays, the house, the contractors, the family birthdays, his dry cleaning, and the invisible emotional machinery that allowed successful men to believe their lives ran smoothly by nature.
Six months earlier, Jade’s name had appeared on his phone.
Need you tonight. Same place?
The notification had been visible for perhaps two seconds.
Daniel flipped the screen over.
“Client issue.”
I believed him for almost ten minutes.
After that, I merely pretended to.
There had been late dinners.
A new passcode.
A cologne he wore only on certain Thursdays.
Receipts from a hotel bar twenty blocks from any property his firm owned.
And the strangest clue of all had not involved sex.
It involved Hollis Manor.
Three weeks before Thanksgiving, I had walked into Daniel’s home office and found architectural drawings open on his monitor.
He minimized them so quickly I saw only a title.
HM CONVERSION.
“What’s that?”
“Nothing. Concept work.”
“For what?”
“Not everything is a conspiracy, Maggie.”
I had apologized.
That was the kind of marriage we had by then.
I found evidence.
Daniel found a reason I should feel ashamed for noticing it.
Now Jade stood beneath the carved oak archway of Hollis Manor, looking not like a stranger but like someone arriving early to a future she had already been promised.
Dinner was scheduled for five.
At four fifty-five, I carried the last dish into the dining room.
The table seated six.
For seven years, my chair had been at Daniel’s right.
When I entered, he was pulling that chair out for Jade.
He glanced toward the far end.
“You’ll be more comfortable there, Maggie. More room to stretch.”
The room went very quiet.
Rosemary looked at him.
Daniel either did not notice or had become too accustomed to people swallowing their reactions.
I placed the sweet potatoes on the table.
Then I sat where he told me.
At the wrong end of my own Thanksgiving table.
Jade complimented the ivory linens.
She asked Rosemary whether the moldings were original.
She asked if the carriage house had plumbing.
She asked whether the east wing bedrooms shared walls.
Daniel answered eagerly.
“The property has incredible potential.”
Potential.
I looked at him.
A year earlier, his father’s ashes had still been on the mantel upstairs when Daniel called the west lawn “underutilized.”
Harold Hollis had loved this house with a stubbornness I used to tease him about.
He knew which stair creaked in winter.
He refused to replace a warped library window because Daniel and his sister had carved their initials into the frame when they were children.
Once, when Daniel suggested selling part of the back acreage, Harold said:
“Not everything empty is waiting to be monetized.”
Daniel had laughed.
Harold had not.
Jade turned to me.
“You must have had fun decorating all this.”
I looked at her carefully.
She was twenty-nine.
Beautiful in a disciplined, polished way.
Dark hair.
Flawless makeup.
Slim gold earrings.
For six months I had imagined her as something less human than a woman.
A predator.
A thief.
A person who had crawled through a crack in my marriage and taken what belonged to me.
But sitting three chairs away from her, I realized something humiliating.
She looked nervous.
Not innocent.
But nervous.
And that meant Daniel had probably told her a story too.
Maybe I was cold.
Maybe our marriage had been over for years.
Maybe I refused to accept reality.
Maybe I was pregnant because of some tragic last attempt to repair something already dead.
People who betray you rarely describe themselves as betrayers.
They edit the story until they can live inside it.
“It’s mostly Rosemary’s things,” I said.
Daniel corrected me.
“Eventually it’ll be ours.”
Rosemary’s fork stopped halfway to her mouth.
“Our?” she asked.
Daniel smiled.
“The house.”
“I heard you.”
Rosemary set down her fork.
“I’m asking what makes you think Hollis Manor will ever be yours.”
Daniel's smile disappeared.
“Mom.”
“What?”
“We've discussed this.”
“No.”
Rosemary picked up her wine.
“You talked.”
A tiny difference.
A devastating one.
Daniel leaned back.
“Dad left the property to the family trust.”
“Yes.”
“And I'm trustee.”
“No.”
Silence.
I looked at Rosemary.
So did Daniel.
“What do you mean, no?”
Rosemary took one sip.
“Your father removed you as trustee eleven days before he died.”
Daniel laughed.
It sounded wrong.
“That's impossible.”
“No, darling.”
Rosemary looked directly at him.
“You simply never bothered to read the final amendment.”
Then she turned toward me.
“Maggie did.”
My fork slipped from my hand.
Because I hadn't.
At least—
I didn't think I had.
Rosemary stood.
Walked to the sideboard.
Opened a drawer.
And removed a cream-colored envelope.
My name was written across the front.
In Harold Hollis's handwriting.
MARGARET.
Daniel stared at it.
“What the hell is that?”
Rosemary placed it beside my plate.
“Something your father left for his daughter-in-law.”
Daniel's face darkened.
“You've been hiding documents from me?”
“No.”
Rosemary sat down again.
“I've been waiting.”
“For what?”
She looked at Jade.
Then at Daniel.
“For you to become exactly the man Harold was afraid you might become.”
May you like
Nobody touched dinner after that.
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