Chapter 1 - The Belly That Fell at Afternoon Tea
The pitcher was heavier than I expected, but my hands did not hesitate when I lifted it from the white linen table.
One moment my stepmother stood in the afternoon sunshine, accepting compliments about the baby she claimed to carry, and the next a sheet of lukewarm water struck her burgundy maternity dress.
Crystal cups rattled as the pitcher hit the table.
The soaked fabric clung to the enormous round shape beneath it, and an impossible straight edge appeared where the curve of a pregnant stomach should have been.
The shape lurched toward her left hip.
Vivienne Hale looked down and made a small, strangled sound.
For one terrible second, nobody spoke.
Then she grabbed a white napkin, crushed it against her stomach, and slapped me so hard that my face turned toward the rosebushes.
"YOU LITTLE BITCH!"
"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!" she screamed.
My cheek burned, but I had not come to that garden expecting kindness.
I had come to make my father see what she had spent five months persuading him not to question.
I was twenty-two, old enough to recognize a lie and apparently still young enough for Vivienne to believe she could silence me with humiliation.
Around us, wealthy guests in linen suits and expensive summer dresses stepped away from the tables.
Someone gasped, and a porcelain spoon clattered onto the stone terrace.
My father, David Hale, stood near the garden entrance speaking to a donor, unaware of the first seconds of the confrontation.
I ran to him, seized his arm, and pulled him toward the tea table.
"DAD!"
"SHE'S FAKING THE PREGNANCY!" I shouted.
His blue eyes moved from the red mark rising on my cheek to the wet dress and then to the strange angle of his wife's stomach.
For months, he had touched that belly with such reverence that watching his expression change almost hurt more than the slap.
"Avery, what are you talking about?" he asked.
"Look at her," I said.
"Just look."
Vivienne turned sideways and pressed the napkin harder against the shifting shape.
Her platinum-blonde hair stuck to the damp neckline of her dress.
"She's having another episode," she told him.
"David, your daughter has been jealous from the beginning."
I knew that sentence before she finished it.
It had become the explanation for every concern I had raised since their marriage.
If I asked about a strange financial document, I was jealous.
If I wondered why Vivienne never allowed my father to accompany her to a prenatal appointment, I was jealous.
If I missed the mother I had buried nine years earlier, I was selfish as well.
"I'm standing right here," I said.
Vivienne lunged toward me, one hand reaching for my wrist.
My father stepped between us and caught her attacking arm before she could touch me.
He moved her hand away and placed his broad shoulders in front of me.
"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU HIDING?" he roared.
The voice shook me because I had rarely heard him speak that way to anyone.
Vivienne twisted free and backed toward the tea table, still clutching the napkin over the artificial curve.
Her black heel caught the edge of a chair leg.
She stumbled, and her hip struck the table hard enough to overturn a row of crystal teacups.
Porcelain broke against the terrace.
An elastic strap snapped loose beneath the soaked dress.
The second strap slid away as she caught herself on the tabletop.
A large piece of flesh-colored foam slipped through the loose fabric, struck the marble with a hollow thud, and rolled against a shattered saucer.
No one had to explain what we were seeing.
The object on the ground was not a baby.
It was a detachable pregnancy belly with a flat back and stretched elastic fastenings.
My father stared at it, his face turning a painful shade of red.
"YOU LIED ABOUT MY BABY?!" he thundered, striking the table with his open palm.
Vivienne dropped to her knees and reached for the foam as though recovering it could undo what the entire garden had witnessed.
"Please," she whispered.
"I can explain."
David stepped away from her and drew me beside him with a protective arm around my shoulders.
His hand trembled against my pale-blue dress.
For the first time since he remarried, he had placed himself between my stepmother and me without asking me to make peace first.
"How long have you been lying to me?" he demanded.
Vivienne raised her head, tears spilling over perfectly applied makeup.
Instead of answering, she glanced toward a man standing near the garden entrance.
He wore a light-gray summer suit and held a narrow black document case against one leg.
He had been smiling politely at my father only minutes earlier.
Now he looked as though he wanted the earth to open beneath him.
I recognized him immediately.
Miles Trent was my father's financial adviser, the man who had drafted the papers Vivienne wanted signed after tea.
He took one deliberate step toward the gate.
I felt my father's arm tighten.
"Avery," he murmured, "why is she looking at Miles?"
I wished I could tell him that the answer was simple.
I wished the false pregnancy had been the entire deception and that the broken cups represented the worst of it.
But I had spent the previous week reading documents that had no business existing, and Miles's expression told me how much he feared the pages I had already found.
"Because he knows," I said.
"Knows what?"
"Why she needed you to believe there was a baby."
Across the terrace, Vivienne pushed herself upright, abandoning the foam belly among the fragments of china.
The wealthy women who had praised her radiant motherhood stared at the ground or at each other.
The man with the document case turned toward the side path.
My father called his name once.
Miles did not stop.
A breeze moved the white roses, carrying the scent of spilled tea and wet earth through the silence.
"Dad," I said, "don't let anyone convince you this was only a terrible joke."
He looked at the mark on my cheek and then at his wife kneeling beside the evidence of her lie.
"I won't," he answered.
Yet when my phone vibrated inside my dress pocket, I understood that somebody else had been preparing for this moment.
The screen displayed a message from an unknown number.
May you like
You have exposed the costume, Avery.
You have not found the contract.
