Chapter 9 - The Date on the Sonogram
I sat on the garage floor with the sonogram in my hand and did the math three times, because I didn't want it to be true.
The date printed in the corner was from three months after our wedding.
Beckett had known I was pregnant almost from the beginning.
He hadn't been surprised, and he hadn't been lied to by some clinic, and he hadn't been told he couldn't have children — he had been watching me, counting days, keeping a record I never knew about.
Rosalind knelt beside me and asked what I was looking at.
"He knew," I said.
"Before I told him.
Before I even knew for sure.
He knew."
She took the sonogram and looked at the date.
"How?" she said.
"I don't know," I said.
"But I'm going to find out."
The next morning I called Mr. Vance and told him about the box.
He asked me to bring everything to his office that afternoon, and he asked me not to speak to Beckett again without him present.
I agreed.
Ysolde met me at the lawyer's office, and she brought the printed messages from Cressida and her own phone records.
Mr. Vance laid everything out on the conference table — the insurance policy, the forged loan, the accident report, the sonogram, the note, and Ysolde's messages.
He was quiet for a long time.
Then he said, "Mrs. Ariella, this is no longer a divorce matter."
"I know," I said.
"The district attorney will want to hear from you directly," he said.
"And from Ms. Ysolde.
And from the cousin, if he'll talk."
Ysolde said, "He'll talk.
He's scared, but he'll talk.
He already told me he would, if I stayed with him when he did it."
Mr. Vance nodded and wrote something down.
"Then we go to the DA this week," he said.
I went home that night and packed a bag and stayed with Rosalind, and I didn't sleep much.
Two days later I sat in a small office downtown and told a woman with a recorder everything I knew — the nursery, the kiss, the ribbon, the shoebox, the policy, the loan, my brother, the note in the garage.
She listened without interrupting, and when I finished she asked me if I was willing to testify.
"Yes," I said.
"I am."
Beckett was charged within the week, and the hearing came faster than I expected.
His lawyer stood up and called me a jealous wife who had misread a kiss and gone looking for something that wasn't there.
I sat still and let him talk.
Then Mr. Vance put the cousin's recorded statement on the record, and the forged signature on the loan, and the policy with my name on it and Beckett's name as beneficiary.
Ysolde testified after that.
She told the court that Beckett had told her he was divorced and couldn't have children, and she showed them the same paper he had used with her about the divorce.
Then she said something I hadn't heard before.
She said he had told her he had never lost a baby, that he had never been through anything like that, that she would be his first.
I sat in that chair and understood something I hadn't let myself see.
He had told her she was his first.
He had told me I was his wife.
He had told Cressida something else, and I didn't want to know what.
After the hearing, Mr. Vance walked me out to the hallway and told me Grant's estate could finally be settled, that the forged documents wouldn't hold, and that I would be all right.
Then he said, "Beckett has asked to see you before sentencing."
I stood there with my coat over my arm.
"He wants to see me?"
I said.
"He does," Mr. Vance said.
"You don't have to go."
I looked down the hallway at the doors and the people walking past, and I thought about the nursery and the shoes and the ribbon on the floor.
"I'll think about it," I said.
And I did think about it, all the way home.
