Chapter 2 - The Ghost of the Casserole Queen
The walk out of the clinic felt like a parade of the damned,
with Derek trailing behind me like a wounded animal while Jessica tried to pull him toward the parking lot.
I walked with my head held high,
the red lipstick I had put on earlier feeling like war paint.
“Sarah,
wait!”
Derek called out,
his voice echoing across the sterile lobby.
I didn't stop,
I pushed through the glass doors and into the humid North Carolina air,
breathing in the scent of rain and freedom.
He caught up to me at my car,
his hands reaching out as if he could still touch the life he had discarded.
“Sarah,
we need to talk,”
he pleaded,
his eyes searching mine for a forgiveness he would never find.
“The math...
I just didn't realize...
the surgery...”
“The surgery was eight weeks ago,
Derek,”
I said,
my voice as cold as the ultrasound gel.
“But your betrayal was much older than that.”
Jessica stood by his car,
watching us with a mixture of fury and desperation,
knowing that the man she had stolen was currently looking at his wife as if she were a goddess.
“Go home to Jessica,
Derek,”
I told him,
opening my car door.
“I’m sure she has a casserole recipe waiting for you.”
The irony was a bitter sting,
and I saw him flinch as he remembered the weekends his mistress had spent pretending to be my friend.
I drove away,
leaving them in the parking lot,
but the real battle was waiting for me at home.
When I pulled into my driveway,
I saw my mother-in-law’s car still parked there,
she was sitting on the porch swing,
waiting to gloat about the divorce papers she thought I would be signing in tears.
She stood up as I approached,
a smug smile playing on her lips.
“Well?”
she asked.
“How did it go?”
“Was it a boy or a girl for your mysterious lover?”
I walked right up to her,
pressed the ultrasound photo into her hand,
and watched her face transform.
She recognized the Miller family nose even in a grainy gray shadow,
she saw the date of conception,
and she saw the ruin of her son’s reputation.
“It’s a boy,”
I said,
my voice steady and clear.
“And his name is not Miller.”
“I’m changing my last name back to my maiden name,”
“and my son will carry the name of a mother who actually wanted him.”
She began to stutter,
her heavy-duty trash bags sitting in the foyer like a monument to her own malice.
“Sarah,
now,
let’s be reasonable,”
she started,
but I didn't give her the chance.
“Get out of my house,”
I told her.
“And take your son’s trash with you.”
I watched her scurry away,
dragging the bags of Derek’s clothes down the driveway,
May you like
and for the first time in weeks,
the air in my house felt clean.
