12. Chantal
— ? —
Chantal
The kiss that follows is nothing like the first one.
It’s not tentative. Not questioning. It’s five years of wanting, crashing together like waves against rocks.
Isaac’s mouth is hot against mine, his hands sliding down my back, pulling me closer even though my belly makes closer complicated. I gasp against his lips when his teeth graze my lower lip, and the sound he makes - a low, rough groan - vibrates through my entire body.
My fingers find his shirt buttons. One. Two.
Cedrick was on this porch twenty minutes ago. His headlights are barely cold. If you do this now, tonight, you’ll never know if it was want or war.
Three buttons. His chest is warm under my palms, and there’s the scar on his forearm I’ve never asked about, pale and old, and I want to ask about it, I want to map it, I want-
Stop. Not like this. Not with Cedrick’s cologne still hanging in the doorway.
Isaac feels the shift before I say a word. He pulls back, breathing hard, his forehead dropping to mine.
“Too fast,” he says. It’s not a question.
“Not too fast.” My voice is unsteady. “Wrong night. If we do this now, it’s about him. And I don’t want a single thing between us to be about him.”
Something moves through his eyes - want and disappointment and, underneath both, a relief so tender it makes my chest hurt.
“Then we wait.” He buttons his shirt back up with fingers that aren’t quite steady. “I’ve waited five years. I can wait until it’s just us.”
“You’re kind of amazing, you know that?”
“I’m kind of dying, actually.” He laughs, rough and wrecked. “But amazing works too.”
We lie on top of the covers, tangled and clothed, his hand splayed over my belly, and I trace the scar on his forearm through the fabric of his shirt.
“How’d you get this?”
“Car accident. Freshman year of college.” His fingers play with my hair, gentle and idle. “I was an idiot who didn’t wear seatbelts.”
“You’re still an idiot sometimes.”
“True.” He presses a kiss to my temple. “But I’m your idiot now.”
The words land in my chest like a spark catching dry kindling.
Your idiot.
Yours.
Neither of us sleeps. The ceiling fan turns. Somewhere outside, a dog complains about something.
“Tell me something true,” I say into the dark. “Something you’ve never told anyone.”
He’s quiet long enough that I think he might not answer.
“I had a flight booked. Barcelona. Same weekend.” His voice is very even, the way voices get when they’re carrying something heavy. “I told myself it was a coincidence - great fares, once in a lifetime. I sat in my truck outside the church for twenty minutes with my thumb over the confirmation.”
“You were his best man.”
“I was his best man. I had the rings in my pocket.” A breath.
“That’s the part I’ve never said out loud to anybody.
There’s a version of that morning where I drive to the airport and your wedding just - stops.
A church full of people and no rings and no best man, and you standing up there figuring out why. ”
“Isaac.”
“I know.”
“What made you come in?”
“Because that’s what it would have cost you.” He says it simply. “I could live with wanting you. I couldn’t live with being the reason you were humiliated in a church.”
I find his hand in the dark and hold it.
“For the record,” I whisper, “I would have noticed.”
“Yeah.” His thumb moves along the inside of my wrist. “That was the problem.”
Three hours later, the sun is coming up, and I’m on my front porch with a mug of tea watching the gold spread across the neighborhood when Cedrick’s mother’s Mercedes pulls into my driveway.
Margaret Clyborne exits the car with the air of someone attending a funeral - mouth pressed thin, spine ramrod straight, designer heels clicking against my cracked concrete.
“Chantal.”
“Margaret.”
She stops at the bottom of the porch steps, taking in my rumpled appearance with barely concealed distaste.
“I came to discuss the situation.”
“The situation.” I fold my arms over my belly. “You mean the situation where your son cheated on his pregnant wife for eighteen months with her best friend?”
“I mean the situation where my son’s marriage is ending, and I want to make sure my grandchild isn’t caught in the crossfire.”
Inside, I hear Isaac moving around the kitchen. The coffeepot clicks on.
Margaret’s eyes narrow. “Is that-”
“That’s none of your business.”
“Everything involving my grandchild is my business.”
“Then maybe you should have raised a son who understood that concept.”
The words hit their target. Her composure flickers - just for a moment, just long enough to see the shame underneath.
“I’m not the enemy, Chantal.” Her voice loses some of its edge. “I loved you like a daughter. What Cedrick did was unforgivable. But that baby - she’s my blood. I’m asking you, mother to mother, not to cut me out.”
The door opens behind me. Isaac, carrying two cups of coffee, his presence solid and quiet.
“Everything okay out here?”
“Fine.” I take one of the cups without looking away from her. “Margaret was just getting to her point.”
She stares at Isaac - at the coffee, at the ease of him, at everything it implies - and her mouth tightens into a line.
“I see.”
“No,” I say quietly. “You don’t. You see what everyone sees: the pregnant woman moving on too fast, the best friend hovering too close.
You don’t see the four years I spent lonely in a marriage your son checked out of.
You don’t see the nights I cried myself to sleep wondering why my husband didn’t want to come home.
You weren’t looking, Margaret. Nobody was looking. ”
“That’s not-”
“Isaac has been more present in a month than Cedrick was in four years. He held my hand at the ultrasound. He builds cribs. He shows up. So yes, he’s on my porch before sunrise with coffee, and no, I don’t owe you an explanation for that.”
My voice doesn’t waver. My hands are steady on the cup.
“You want to be in your grandchild’s life?” I continue. “Then prove you’re worth being in it. Support me through this divorce instead of defending him. Choose her over your son’s ego. Because I promise you - if you come at me the way you came at his first girlfriend, you’ll never meet this baby.”
Her chin lifts. “I don’t know what you’re-”
“Catherine.”
The name lands like a dropped plate.
“The girl he dated in college. The one you ‘encouraged’ to get an abortion because she wasn’t good enough for the Clyborne family legacy.
” I watch her grip her pocketbook. “Cedrick told me about it the night he proposed. I think he thought it was romantic - proof of how much he loved me, that he was willing to defy you. Turns out he was just defying you in different ways.”
The color drains out of her face by degrees, like someone letting the air out of her.
“He told you,” she says faintly.
“He tells people things when he drinks, Margaret. You should hear what your bridge club knows.”
Her mouth opens. Nothing comes out. For the first time in twenty years, Margaret Clyborne has nothing to say.
“Think about what I said.” I turn toward the door, Isaac’s hand finding the small of my back. “And next time, call before you show up.”
Inside, Isaac lets out a long breath.
“That was…”
“Terrifying?”
“I was going to say impressive. But also, yes, deeply terrifying. Remind me to never keep secrets from you.”
“You already don’t.” I sink onto the couch, suddenly exhausted, the adrenaline draining out and leaving the ache in my lower back that never fully leaves anymore. “She’s going to tell Cedrick everything. The coffee. You. Six AM.”
“Probably.”
“He’ll use it. Try to prove I was cheating before the separation.”
“He can try.” Isaac sits beside me, thigh warm against mine. “There’s nothing to find, because nothing happened. Nothing’s still happening, technically, which - for the record - is the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and I once carried a refrigerator up three flights of stairs.”
“Poor baby.”
“Alone, Chantal. Three flights.”
I laugh, and he grins, and for a moment the war goes quiet.
Then my phone buzzes.
UNKNOWN NUMBER: I’m 14 weeks pregnant with Cedrick’s baby. Our children will be siblings whether you like it or not. You’ll never be rid of me. - Hazel
I show Isaac the screen.
His jaw tightens. “That’s bullshit.”
“How do you know?”
“Because Cedrick told me he always used protection with her. He was paranoid about it - said he couldn’t risk a ‘complication.’” He meets my eyes, grim. “His word. Not mine.”
“But if she is pregnant-”
“Then we deal with it. Together. But I’m betting she’s not.” His hand closes over mine. “Think about the timing. You win the dinner party. You survive his mother. And within the hour, Hazel manifests a baby. That’s not a pregnancy, Chantal. That’s a press release.”
I stare at the text for a long moment. Then I block the number and set the phone face-down on the coffee table.
“Whatever happens,” I say, “we handle it together.”
“Together,” he agrees.
Outside, Margaret’s Mercedes finally pulls away.
Inside, the baby kicks against my palm, strong and indignant, like she has opinions about all of it.
“I know, baby girl,” I murmur. “Me too.”
And somewhere across town, Hazel Newman is weaving a lie that’s going to explode in everyone’s face.