My Husband Got My Twin Sister Pregnant (Her Marriage in Crisis #61)

Prologue

Noelle

The trick to being a Sterling wife is knowing which version of yourself to wear.

Tonight I’m wearing the hostess. Calm smile, soft voice, a woman who arranges peonies in crystal vases and pretends not to notice when her mother-in-law counts the water spots on the stemware. I’ve gotten good at her. Five years of practice will do that.

I smooth the edge of a linen napkin for the third time and step back to survey the dining room.

The table set for the whole family. The good china, not the everyday Wedgwood, the actual good china that Cordelia gifted us for our first anniversary with a card that said for when you’re ready to host properly.

Candles lit. Music low. Everything staged like a photograph in a magazine no one actually reads.

This is what they ordered when they arranged me into this family like furniture. A woman who could clean up messes without making new ones. A woman who knew how to disappear into the backdrop of someone else’s life and call it a marriage.

Lucky me. I’ve always been good at disappearing.

“Babe?” Dorian’s voice floats from the living room. “Did you move my charger?”

“It’s on your nightstand. Where it always is.”

“I looked there.”

“Look again.”

The sigh that follows is heavy enough to have its own weather system, and something in my chest tightens. This is us now. Chargers and sighs and conversations that never quite land. We talk around each other instead of to each other, like two people sharing a subway car, careful not to touch.

Stop it, I tell myself. Tonight is about fixing that.

The vow renewal was my idea. Romantic, I told him. A chance to remember why we chose this. He’d agreed with the kind of enthusiasm you give a dental cleaning, fine, sure, whatever you want, but he’d agreed. That has to mean something.

Doesn’t it?

I shake off the thought and head to the hall closet.

The guests will need somewhere for their coats, and this closet has become a graveyard of things we keep meaning to deal with.

Dorian’s college lacrosse gear. My backup sewing machine.

Three identical umbrellas because neither of us ever remembers we already own one.

I start pulling things out, making a pile for donation, when my hand closes around something soft.

Lace.

The fabric spills through my hands like water, black, delicate, a bralette and matching thong still connected by that little plastic tag from the store. The kind of thing you buy when you want someone to take it off you.

I check the size without thinking, the way you do.

Small.

I’m a medium. Have been since college. My body doesn’t fit into small things, it never has, no matter how many times Cordelia suggests I try the salmon instead of the steak.

My hand is still in the closet. Still reaching. And now it closes around something else, a folded toddler car seat. The portable kind, the kind that clips into a base. The kind you use for a child small enough to need carrying.

We don’t have children.

We’ve never had children.

We’ve never even talked about children, not really, not beyond Dorian’s vague someday and Cordelia’s pointed comments about heirs.

I stand there.

Too long.

Way too long.

The car seat is heavy in one hand, the lingerie light as air in the other, and my brain is doing that thing where it splits into two people, the one who’s screaming and the one who’s already writing the excuse.

There’s an explanation. There’s always an explanation.

You’re overreacting. You’re being crazy. You’re doing the thing.

But I can’t stop staring at the size tag.

Small.

Such a small word for something that’s cracking my chest open.

Maybe I bought this and forgot. Maybe it was a gift for someone. Maybe it got mixed in with our things at the dry cleaner, or maybe-

Maybe nothing. Maybe I should just ask. Asking is normal. Asking is what wives do. Asking doesn’t make me paranoid or difficult or exhausting.

Asking is fine.

Then why are your hands shaking?

“Dorian?”

My voice comes out steadier than it should. That’s the thing about being married to someone for five years, you learn how to flatten your panic into something polite.

He’s on the couch, thumb scrolling through his phone with the intense focus he never gives me anymore. Doesn’t look up.

“Mm.”

“Can you look at me, please?”

A sigh. The phone lowers an inch. His eyes flick to me, then to the objects in my hands, then back to the screen.

“What’s that?”

“That’s what I’m asking you.” I hold out the lingerie, the car seat still tucked under my arm. “I found these in the hall closet. Behind your lacrosse stuff. Shoved in the back like someone was hiding them.”

“Okay?”

“Okay?” I repeat. “Dorian, it’s lingerie. And a car seat. In our home. Where we don’t have a baby.”

He sets the phone down. Finally. But the look on his face isn’t guilt or surprise or even confusion, it’s patience. The kind of patience you use on a child who’s asked why the sky is blue for the fifteenth time.

“That’s Diane’s stuff, babe.”

“Diane.”

“My assistant? You’ve heard me talk about her.”

“I’ve heard you talk about her. I’ve never met her. She’s never been here.”

“She has, though.” He says it so simply. So smoothly. Like he’s correcting a minor misunderstanding, not rewriting reality. “Remember last month when I had those contracts couriered over? She took an Uber, dropped them off. You were at your mom’s that weekend.”

“I don’t-”

“She had the car seat because she’d just picked it up for her sister’s baby shower.

And the lingerie’s a gift she’s returning for a friend, she asked if she could leave it here so she didn’t have to lug it around the city all day.

” He shrugs. “She forgot to grab it when she left. That’s it. That’s the whole story.”

The words land like stones dropping into still water. Each one perfectly placed. Each one exactly what an innocent explanation would sound like.

And yet.

“The lingerie is a size small,” I say. “Diane is-” I try to picture the woman from Dorian’s office party two years ago. Tall, broad-shouldered, loud laugh. “Diane’s not a small.”

“It’s for her friend, Noelle. Not her.”

“And she just happened to leave it shoved behind a car seat in the back of our coat closet? Not on the counter, not by the door, but hidden-”

“It wasn’t hidden.” His voice sharpens. Just a fraction. Just enough to make me flinch. “You’re acting like I buried it under the floorboards. She set it down, she forgot it, end of story.”

I open my mouth.

Close it.

Open it again.

“Dorian, this doesn’t-”

“Noelle.” He stands up. Walks toward me. His hands find my shoulders, and his grip is gentle but his eyes are hard. “You’re doing the thing again.”

The thing.

The thing.

Three words, and my whole body goes cold.

He’s been using those words for years. Every time I notice something that doesn’t add up. Every time I ask a question he doesn’t want to answer. Every time my gut screams that something is wrong and I make the mistake of saying it out loud.

You’re doing the thing.

Translation: You’re being crazy.

Translation: You’re being difficult.

Translation: You’re being the kind of wife who drives her husband away, and if he leaves, it’ll be your fault for not knowing when to shut up and smile.

“I’m not doing anything,” I whisper. “I’m just asking-”

“You’re spiraling.” His thumbs rub circles on my shoulders. Soothing. Patronizing. “You’re stressed about the dinner tonight, and you’re looking for problems where there aren’t any. That’s what you do when you’re anxious. We’ve talked about this.”

Have we? I don’t remember talking about this. I remember him telling me this, over and over, until I started to believe it.

“I’m not anxious, I’m-”

“Babe.” He leans in. Kisses my forehead. “Don’t do the thing. Okay? Not tonight. We have a house full of people coming in an hour, and I need you to be on. Can you do that for me? Can you just... let this go?”

The car seat is getting heavy under my arm.

The lingerie is still dangling from my fingers, size small, black lace, pretty enough to be innocent.

He’s looking at me with that expression, the one that’s patient and loving and slightly exhausted, the expression of a man dealing with his difficult wife, and I feel myself caving the way I always do. Folding in on myself. Apologizing for the crime of noticing things.

“Yeah,” I hear myself say. “Yeah, okay. Sorry. You’re right. I’m just stressed.”

“I know you are.” Another forehead kiss. “It’s going to be fine. You always overthink these things.”

He goes back to the couch. Back to his phone. Conversation over.

I return the lingerie to the closet. Tuck the car seat behind it. Close the door.

And I stand there for a long moment, hand pressed flat against the wood, wondering when asking my husband a question became something I had to apologize for.

The doorbell releases me from my own spiral.

Guests arrive in waves, Cordelia first, then the uncles and cousins and board members, then Sebastian slipping in last like he’s gracing us with his presence.

I smile and take coats and compliment jewelry I don’t care about, and by the time everyone’s seated for dinner, my face aches from performing.

The meal unfolds the way Sterling dinners always do.

Cordelia holds court from the head of the table, offering opinions disguised as observations.

The risotto is a bit heavy, isn’t it? I find heavy food so exhausting.

Dorian charms the cousins with stories about Monaco, about yachts, about the glamorous life he leads while I coordinate his dry cleaning.

Sebastian sits in silence, watching everything, saying nothing.

I push food around my plate and wait for my moment.

It comes between the main course and dessert, when there’s a natural lull in conversation. I set down my fork. Straighten my spine. Reach under the table for Dorian’s hand, and when he takes it, I let myself believe it means something.

“Actually,” I say, and the word cuts clean through the chatter, “I have an announcement.”