2. Chantal #2
I let it stay there one beat longer than she can bear. Then I release her. She pulls it back into her lap like she’s been burned.
“Actually,” I say, turning to include Margaret, who’s been watching us with that misty-eyed expression she gets at baby showers, “I’ve been meaning to ask you something, Hazel. I wanted to do it privately, but this feels right. With everyone here.”
Hazel goes very still. “Ask me what?”
“Would you be her godmother?”
The table goes quiet.
Margaret’s hand flies to her chest. “Oh, Chantal. That’s beautiful.”
“You’re my best friend,” I continue, watching Hazel’s face cycle through emotions she can’t afford to show. “You’ve been there for everything. Every craving, every complaint, every midnight panic about whether I’m ready for this. I can’t imagine anyone else.”
Hazel’s mouth opens. Closes. Opens again.
“I - of course.” Her voice sounds scraped raw. “I would be honored.”
Margaret dabs at her eyes with a cocktail napkin. “This is the sweetest thing I’ve ever witnessed. Truly.”
“To the godmother,” Cedrick says, raising his glass.
The table toasts. Hazel drinks. Her hand is shaking.
Someone takes a photo. Margaret insists on it - all four of us, Hazel’s arm around my shoulders, Cedrick behind us with his hand on my chair.
She’ll frame it. I know she’ll frame it, because Margaret frames everything, and I stand there and let her, because someday that photograph is going to be evidence.
Eleven minutes later, Hazel excuses herself to the restroom.
I count every one of them.
When she comes back, her makeup has been redone. Fresh mascara. New lipstick. But her eyes are red-rimmed in a way no concealer can hide, and she doesn’t look at me when she sits down.
Cedrick pulls me onto the dance floor shortly after, his hand possessive on my waist, and I let him spin me past the champagne table where Hazel has retreated again. She’s watching us, glass frozen halfway to her lips, and even from twenty feet away I can read everything on her face.
I catch her eye over Cedrick’s shoulder.
And I wave.
Just a little flutter of my fingers. A friendly acknowledgment between best friends.
The color drains from her face. She sets down her champagne and disappears into the crowd.
I press closer to my husband and smile.
“Everything okay?” Cedrick murmurs against my temple.
“Perfect,” I say. “Everything’s perfect.”
***
The following week, I have my thirty-week checkup.
It’s the first appointment Cedrick hasn’t skipped in three months. He holds my hand in the waiting room, asks questions about folic acid and kick counts, and when the ultrasound tech points out our daughter’s tiny fingers, he actually tears up.
It’s a beautiful performance. Almost convincing.
“She has your nose,” he says, squinting at the grainy image.
“And your stubbornness. She’s been kicking me nonstop since four this morning.”
“That’s my girl.” He kisses my knuckles. “Sorry, kiddo. It’s genetic. Your grandmother’s worse.”
The tech prints us extra photos - his request - and we walk out arm in arm, the picture of expectant marital bliss.
My phone buzzes as we reach the lobby.
HAZEL: How was the appointment?? Should I come to the next one?
I show Cedrick the screen, watching his face for the flicker. There it is - half a second, gone.
“She’s so excited about the baby,” I say. “It’s sweet.”
“Yeah.” He looks away. “Sweet.”
ME: Cedrick wants it to be just us. Finally acting like a husband again! ??
HAZEL: That’s great!! So happy for you!!
The three dots appear. Disappear. Appear again. Twenty seconds before that reply comes through, and I can practically hear her grinding her teeth through the screen.
The exclamation points taste like victory.
At the front desk, the receptionist catches us before we leave.
“Mrs. Clyborne?” She’s holding a small paper bag. “These were dropped off for you earlier. Prenatal vitamins?”
I frown. “I didn’t order any-”
“A gentleman dropped them off. Said you left them in his truck?” She checks the note. “Isaac Wren? He said you’d know what it was about.”
Beside me, Cedrick goes very still.
“Oh - right.” I take the bag. “He gave me a ride to last month’s appointment when you had that conflict. I must have left them in his console.”
“Isaac drove you to a doctor’s appointment?”
And the memory comes up whole, unbidden.
A month ago. Rain hammering the windows.
Cedrick’s client emergency, Hazel suddenly in Chicago, and me standing in my own kitchen with car keys I was too dizzy to use.
I’d mentioned it - barely, in passing, at Tom’s cookout the weekend before, that the appointments were piling up.
And Isaac just… appeared. Truck in the driveway, twenty minutes after one text.
He didn’t fill the silence on the drive. Didn’t ask why my husband couldn’t take me. Just turned the radio low and drove, and when I came out an hour and ten minutes later, he was still in the parking lot with two smoothies sweating in the cup holders.
“You didn’t have to wait,” I’d said.
“I know,” he’d said. That was all. The whole conversation.
I filed it away then as Cedrick’s kind friend. I didn’t think about it again.
I’m thinking about it now.
“You didn’t tell me that,” Cedrick says.
“Didn’t I?” I blink, all innocence. “I could’ve sworn I mentioned it. You had that emergency, and Hazel was out of town, and Isaac was already going past the medical complex. It wasn’t a big deal.”
It wasn’t a big deal. The words hang there, and I watch my husband try to decide whether he’s allowed to be upset about his pregnant wife accepting a ride from his best friend while he was busy fucking her best friend.
In the car, he doesn’t speak for six blocks.
Finally: “I don’t like him hanging around you.”
“Who, Isaac?”
“He’s always been-” He cuts himself off, jaw working. “He looks at you sometimes. I’ve seen it.”
“Isaac is your best friend. He’s known me almost as long as you have.”
“Exactly.”
The word lands like an accusation. I file it away in the cabinet of useful things, right between Cedrick’s guilt and Cedrick’s ego.
“If it bothers you,” I say carefully, “I won’t accept rides from him anymore.”
“It’s not about that-”
“Then what’s it about?”
He doesn’t answer. He can’t, because the answer is that he doesn’t want his best friend near his wife while he’s sleeping with her best friend, and even Cedrick isn’t shameless enough to say it out loud.
I reach across the console and take his hand.
“I love you,” I tell him. “Only you. Always you.”
The tension drains out of his shoulders. He lifts my hand and kisses my knuckles, and his eyes go soft with relief and gratitude and something that might almost be love, if love could survive what he’s done to it.
“I know,” he says. “I love you too.”
Liar, I think.
Liar, liar, liar.
But I smile, and I squeeze his hand, and I let him believe he’s won.
***
That night, I pull out the guest list for the dinner party.
Cedrick finds me at the kitchen table, index cards spread out like tarot.
“Planning world domination?”
“Just dinner.” I pat the seat beside me. “Want to help?”
He slides in and pulls me against his side, chin on my shoulder. “You put Hazel across from you.”
“Of course. She’s my best friend.”
His arm tightens. Just briefly. Just enough.
“What?” I twist to look at him. “Do you not want her there?”
“No, it’s-” He runs a hand through his hair, not meeting my eyes. “It’s fine. I just know you’ve been tired. I don’t want you overextending yourself.”
“Hazel offered to help with everything. The decorations, the catering, all of it.” I turn back to the seating chart. “She’s been such a good friend through all of this.”
The silence that follows is deafening.
“Yeah,” he finally says. “She has.”
I lean back against him and close my eyes, feeling his heart thud against my shoulder blade - a little too fast for a man with nothing to hide.
My phone buzzes as I’m getting ready for bed.
Unknown number. But I recognize the cadence immediately.
UNKNOWN: I know what you’re doing with Cedrick. Whatever game you’re playing, I’m going to figure it out.
Hazel. On a burner. Too paranoid to text from her real phone after the screenshot.
I type back: Wrong number. Have a great night! ??
I block the number, screenshot the message, and file it in the evidence folder.
In the bathroom, Cedrick brushes his teeth, humming something tuneless. The sound of a man who thinks he’s gotten away with everything.
I watch his reflection and try to remember what it felt like to love him.
It’s harder than it should be.
Eleven days.
The clock is ticking, and my husband has no idea that every smile, every kiss, every whispered I love you is just another step toward his destruction.
He’ll have eleven days to notice. He won’t use one of them.