Chapter 1The Ghost I Crowned

Five years into my marriage, my husband’s mistress was pregnant. I didn’t throw a single plate this time. I didn’t scream until my throat was raw. Instead, I drove to her rundown apartment in a forgotten part of the city and brought her home.

She was ten years younger than me, with wide, dark eyes and a gracefully sculpted nose. A ghost of me at twenty.

Her hand hovered protectively over her belly. “Ma’am,” she whispered, her voice trembling. “I can have the baby and then I’ll disappear. I won’t ask for anything, I swear.”

I reached out and smoothed a stray strand of hair from her forehead. Don’t be afraid, I thought. I’ll help you take my place as soon as possible.

After all, if I waited any longer, the brilliant college boy I had my eye on would be leaving the country.

* * *

By the time some well-meaning informant slipped the news of Stella’s pregnancy into my hands, she was already three months along.

It wasn’t that Donovan had set out to humiliate me. Not this time. It was just that three months ago, on my birthday, we’d had a fight. I’d said things I couldn’t take back, things designed to cut deep, and he had stormed out of our Fifth Avenue apartment in a fury.

He must have ended up with her—a girl so desperate to pay for her mother’s medical bills that she’d do just about anything.

I don’t know the sordid details of that night. All I saw was the shirt Donovan discarded the next morning. Near the hem, almost invisible against the white cotton, were tiny blossoms of blood.

She wasn’t the first substitute he’d found for me.

I didn’t give it a second thought.

And because of that, I never knew she could be pregnant.

The black town car wound its way toward the city’s edges, into a neighborhood of brick tenements and forgotten factories. The farther we went, the deeper the frown etched itself onto my face.

“Arthur,” I said, my voice quiet. “Didn’t Mr. Hayes buy this girl an apartment?”

Arthur, our driver for the past decade, met my eyes in the rearview mirror. His expression was carefully blank. “He did, Mrs. Hayes. She wouldn’t take it.”

A flicker of recognition. That stubborn pride sounded a little like me, a long time ago.

When we arrived, my frown tightened. The buildings were packed together so tightly they seemed to be leaning on each other for support, blotting out the sun. She lived on the eighth floor of a walk-up with a narrow, suffocating staircase. Climbing those stairs, one by one, left me breathless, a strange feeling for someone who spent three mornings a week with a personal trainer. The air was thick with the scent of damp and decay, a suffocating closeness that was, in a strange way, achingly familiar.

Apartment 801 had a peeling green door. I knocked, and a moment later, it opened to reveal a girl in a simple white dress, her long hair falling over her shoulders. She wore no makeup, but she was beautiful, with wide, startled eyes like a fawn caught in headlights.

The color drained from her face as she recognized me. She took an involuntary step back. “Mrs. Hayes.”

I gave a cool, practiced nod. “Hello.”

The single word made her flinch.

“Aren’t you going to invite me in?”

Stella blinked, then scrambled to the side, holding the door open.

The apartment was a tiny one-bedroom, so small that the master bathroom in my own home was larger than her entire living space. But it was cozy. A lace coverlet was draped over the sagging sofa, a small television sat on a milk crate, and on a little end table were a few handmade trinkets and a framed photograph of Donovan.

Donovan at twenty-one, beaming on a mountain summit, the wind in his hair. I took that picture.

I thought he’d lost it. To think he’d brought it here.

Stella followed my gaze and quickly moved to block the photo. “I—I’m sorry. Mr. Hayes, he… he made me put it there.”

Ten years together. I knew every little game Donovan played. He saw Stella, with her face that was eighty percent mine and a temperament that was fifty percent the girl he fell in love with, and he was trying to claw his way back to the past.

I never understood his obsession with it.

I smiled faintly and sat on her sofa. “You’re pregnant.”

Stella froze. Raw fear bloomed in her eyes. “...Yes.”

“But—but it was an accident. I swear, I didn’t know this would happen.”

“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Hayes. I never wanted to hurt you, I never wanted to come between you. Please, don’t hate me.”

Tears welled and spilled, tracing clean paths down her cheeks. She was heartbreakingly lovely when she cried.

“I’ll get rid of it,” she sobbed. “I’ll leave, I’ll disappear. Please, just… don’t do anything to my mother. She’s sick, she needs me.”

I rose and walked over to her, gently touching her cheek. Her skin was so soft, so new.

“Why are you crying?” I murmured. “I never said you had to get an abortion.”