Chapter 3 - The Woman Named Brooke
Her name was Brooke Ellison.
She contacted me two days after the accident.
I nearly deleted the message.
Then I read the first sentence.
Garrett told me you were separated.
We were not.
He told Brooke I remained in the house only because selling during my pregnancy would be cruel.
He said our marriage ended emotionally more than a year earlier.
He claimed the baby was conceived through fertility treatment before the separation became final.
Every lie contained enough truth to make the rest believable.
We had attended marriage counseling after the second miscarriage.
We had discussed moving.
Garrett had slept in the guest room for several weeks when work pressures became unbearable.
Brooke knew all of it.
He simply rearranged the details until I became an unwanted wife refusing to leave.
She and Garrett had been together for eleven months.
The same eleven months he had brought me tea in bed, attended prenatal appointments, and knelt beside the bathtub every time morning sickness left me too weak to stand.
Brooke sent photographs.
Garrett cooking in her apartment.
Garrett asleep on her couch.
Garrett wearing the sweater I bought him for Christmas.
Then came the final photograph.
Brooke stood sideways in front of a mirror.
Her hand rested on a slight curve beneath her dress.
Beneath the picture she wrote:
I’m fourteen weeks pregnant.
May you like
I stared at the message until the screen dimmed.
Our daughters would be born four months apart.
