Chapter 1 - The Night Ethan Carried Her Through Our Home
I came home three days earlier than Ethan expected.
That was the only reason I saw them.
My name is Madeline Ross.
I was thirty-four, eight months pregnant, and sitting at the formal dining table of our Greenwich family estate with my father and my two children when my husband walked into the room carrying another woman.
Not helping her.
Not steadying her.
Carrying her.
Completely.
Lauren Blake had both arms wrapped around Ethan’s neck and both legs locked around his waist.
She wore a tight black dress.
Ethan wore the dark sweater I had bought him the previous Christmas.
He did not put her down when he saw me.
That was the detail I remembered most later.
He looked directly at his pregnant wife.
At our two silent children.
At my father.
And kept holding his mistress.
“You shouldn’t have come home yet.”
For several seconds, I could not understand the sentence.
I had spent the previous four days at my sister’s house near Boston after my obstetrician recommended rest following a difficult week of contractions.
I came home early because I missed my children.
Apparently Ethan had been counting on my absence.
One hand went instinctively over my belly.
The other tightened around the stem of my cranberry juice glass.
“You’re carrying her right in front of our children?”
Ethan looked irritated.
Not ashamed.
Lauren still clung to him.
“Don’t make a scene here.”
Something inside me cracked.
My fingers loosened.
The glass fell.
CRASH.
Dark red cranberry juice splashed across the hardwood floor among glittering pieces of broken glass.
I fought tears.
“Eight months pregnant... and you’re doing this right here?”
Ethan turned away.
Still carrying Lauren.
He walked toward the connecting hallway.
He did not put her down.
That was when my father stood.
Richard Hale had been sitting silently at the end of the table in his black suit, watching the destruction of his daughter’s marriage happen twelve feet away.
He crossed the room fast.
“Ethan.”
My husband stopped.
Dad closed the distance and delivered one hard open-palm slap across Ethan’s face.
Ethan recoiled.
His cheek flushed red.
But even then, he kept both arms under Lauren.
Dad did not hit him again.
He pointed straight at Ethan.
“YOU FOOL, DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHAT SHE’S BEEN UP TO BEHIND YOUR BACK?”
Everything changed.
Ethan stared at him.
Lauren went white.
I slowly lifted my head.
Dad wasn’t looking at Ethan like a father who had merely caught his son-in-law cheating.
May you like
He looked like a man who had discovered something worse.
And Lauren’s terror told me she knew exactly what it was.
