Chapter 1 - THE WOMAN IN MY ROBE
The bedroom door slammed into the wall just as my husband dragged my daughter’s white dresser across the floor.
Eric froze with both hands gripping the tilted frame. One corner struck the rug with a heavy thud.
“What are you doing to her room?” I demanded.
Behind me, twelve-year-old Molly was still curled on the kitchen floor beneath a gray blanket, her head resting on a pillow beside the cabinets.
I had returned to our Naperville home less than ten minutes earlier after a weeklong conference in Dallas. My flight had been delayed twice, and I had arrived shortly before midnight expecting to find my family asleep.
Instead, my daughter had been sleeping on the floor.
Eric stood barefoot in a navy T-shirt and plaid pajama pants, breathing hard as if I had caught him during a burglary.
“She wanted to sleep out there,” he said too quickly.
I stepped into the room.
Molly’s bed had been pushed against the wall. Her books and clothes were packed into cardboard boxes. Stuffed animals she had owned since kindergarten were crushed beneath folded sweaters.
Beside the bed sat an expensive cream-colored handbag I had never seen before.
A pale photograph was partly trapped beneath the bedside lamp. I could not read the writing, but I recognized the grainy black-and-white shape immediately.
An ultrasound.
Eric followed my eyes and moved in front of the nightstand.
My fingers tightened around the doorframe.
“Move.”
“Rachel, you just got home. You’re tired.”
“Move.”
He reached toward the lamp.
I caught his wrist before his fingers touched the photograph.
“Who is in that closet?”
His face changed.
Not confusion.
Fear.
A soft movement came from behind the half-open closet door.
Then Molly’s voice rose from the hallway.
“Mom?”
I looked back.
She was standing with the blanket wrapped around her shoulders, holding Eric’s phone in both hands.
Her face looked exhausted and frightened.
“Dad said I couldn’t tell you.”
Eric pulled away from me and took one step toward her.
I immediately moved between them.
“Stay where you are,” I said.
“Rachel, give me a chance to explain.”
The closet door opened.
A blonde woman in her early thirties stepped halfway into the room. She wore my pale satin robe over dark sleepwear. One hand rested over her visibly pregnant stomach. The other clutched a sealed envelope.
I stared at my robe, the ultrasound, and the boxes containing my daughter’s life.
The woman’s eyes were wet.
“He never told you who the baby belongs to?” she asked.
Eric looked as though the floor had disappeared beneath him.
I turned to him.
“How long has she been living in my daughter’s room?”
“Six nights,” Molly whispered.
The woman closed her eyes.
“My name is Tessa Cole,” she said. “I worked for your brother.”
My brother Nathan was married. He had two children, a successful law practice, and a campaign for the Illinois State Senate.
He had also built his entire public identity around faith and family.
I looked at the envelope in Tessa’s hand.
“What is that?”
“A prenatal paternity report.”
Eric pressed his palms against his face.
“Rachel, please. This isn’t what you think.”
I laughed once, but there was nothing amused in it.
“You put a pregnant stranger in Molly’s bedroom. You made our daughter sleep on the kitchen floor. You took her belongings apart while I was out of town.”
“I was trying to help your family.”
“My family is standing behind me wrapped in a blanket.”
Molly began crying silently.
Tessa stepped forward.
“Your mother told Eric to hide me here until after Nathan’s campaign fundraiser.”
I stared at her.
“My mother?”
Eric sank onto the edge of the bed.
That was when I understood the fear in his eyes.
May you like
He had not been caught having an affair.
He had been caught helping my family bury one.
