Chapter 1 - Everything but the Baby
The buzzing fluorescent lights over Courtroom 4B made Emma Caldwell’s skin feel thin.
She stood with one hand braced under her eight-month belly and the other on the counsel table, trying not to sway. Across the aisle, Daniel looked polished and annoyed, as if divorce court were an inconvenience between lunch meetings. Vanessa Price sat beside him in a cream blouse and gold hoops, smiling the way some women smiled at clearance racks and other women’s pain.
Judge Margaret Whitaker adjusted her glasses and looked down at the petition.
“Mrs. Caldwell, your filing says you’re waiving your claim to the marital home, the joint savings account, both vehicles, and any share in Caldwell Restoration. Is that what you want?”
Emma heard her own attorney inhale sharply.
“It is,” Emma said.
Judge Whitaker held her gaze. “You understand what you’re giving up.”
“I do.”
Vanessa let out a bright little laugh.
Daniel turned to her. “Stop.”
But Emma was already speaking again, voice low and steady. “He can keep the house, the money, the furniture, and every lie he built around all of it. I don’t want to raise my baby in that house. I don’t want his money hanging over my kid’s head. I just want this child born far enough away from him to sleep.”
A stir moved through the gallery.
Daniel shoved back his chair and stood. “Your Honor, this is exactly what I’ve been saying. She’s emotional, erratic, making me out to be dangerous because she wants sympathy.”
Emma looked at him then, really looked. The missing wedding ring. The small pulse jumping in his jaw. The way his anger always arrived half a second too fast, as if he’d rehearsed it.
Judge Whitaker’s voice cut through the room. “Sit down, Mr. Caldwell.”
He sat.
Vanessa crossed one leg over the other and gave Emma a pitying smile. It was the same smile she’d worn three months earlier at the office Christmas party when Emma had arrived late from a prenatal appointment and found Vanessa in Daniel’s private office, both of them claiming they were reviewing vendor contracts. Emma had known then. She had just not known how much.
Judge Whitaker closed the folder in front of her.
“Before I rule on any temporary orders,” she said, “there is another matter.”
Emma’s spine tightened.
“In the hallway before this hearing, I spoke with a little girl near the vending machines. She was upset. She told me something about her father and what she called ‘the mean lady.’”
Vanessa’s smile vanished.
Daniel’s hand flattened on the table.
The judge turned to the bailiff. “Bring her in, please.”
The back doors opened.
A small girl in a yellow cardigan stepped into the courtroom clutching a worn stuffed rabbit by one ear. Her blond hair was crooked on one side, the way it got when she’d slept in the car. Her eyes found Emma first.
Emma’s breath caught so hard it hurt.
It was Lily.
May you like
Daniel’s six-year-old daughter.
And the child Emma had been raising since she was eighteen months old.
