Chapter 3 - THEY HAD A PLAN FOR AFTER THE BIRTH
I returned to work the next morning because sitting at home would have destroyed me.
Numbers behaved.
People didn’t.
By noon, I had reconstructed nearly every unexplained transfer from the previous year.
Then Sophia sent me a screenshot.
INGRID: Have you thought about going back to work after the birth?
SOPHIA: Eventually.
INGRID: Good. Evelyn has flexible hours.
I stared.
My flexible hours.
My employer had allowed them because of fertility treatments.
Ingrid knew that.
Apparently my family-planning accommodations had already been reassigned to someone else’s baby.
Then:
SOPHIA: Evelyn is not childcare.
INGRID: You are overthinking this.
Sophia had answered:
No. You’re underthinking it.
That was when I started separating Sophia from the Mercer family in my mind.
She had made choices I hated.
She had continued seeing a married man without verifying his story aggressively enough.
But she had not designed this plan.
Then another message arrived from her.
“There’s a group chat you should see.”
She forwarded screenshots Lukas had shown her accidentally when sharing a photograph.
Family chat.
German.
INGRID: Sobald Evelyn das Kind hält, wird sich alles ändern.
Once Evelyn holds the baby, everything will change.
ELISA: Unless she finally grows a spine.
LUKAS: She won’t leave.
My chest tightened.
HEINRICH: Stop speaking about your wife like she isn’t a person.
Lukas’s father.
The same man who had looked down at his plate Sunday night.
Ingrid replied:
You stay out of it.
Then Lukas:
Dad, please. Evelyn wants a family. This gives her one.
I pushed away from my desk.
There it was.
Not an accident.
Not a vague hope.
My husband believed his affair baby was something he could offer me instead of fidelity.
Then Elisa:
And Sophia?
Lukas:
She wants to keep working.
Ingrid:
Then everyone gets what they need.
Everyone.
Except me.
Except Sophia.
Except the baby.
All three of us had been reduced to roles.
Wife.
Mother.
Child.
Then I found another bank transfer.
$3,200 to a contractor called Lakeview Interiors.
I searched our emails.
Three weeks earlier, Lukas had suggested converting my home office into “a more flexible room.”
I refused.
He dropped it surprisingly easily.
The contractor invoice described:
NURSERY CONCEPT / RESIDENTIAL CONVERSION CONSULTATION.
Address:
My house.
I closed my laptop.
They had already been planning a nursery inside my home.
Without asking me.
That evening Lukas said:
“Mom wants us there Sunday again.”
“Does she?”
He nodded.
“Sophia might come.”
He watched my face carefully.
I let exactly the right amount of confusion appear.
“Sophia?”
“My ex.”
“Oh.”
“She’s back in Chicago.”
He hesitated.
“We should all probably clear the air about some things.”
I almost laughed.
The plan had entered its next phase.
Sunday dinner was supposed to be the moment they revealed the baby.
Then watched me break.
Then persuaded me to stay.
Fine.
I called Rachel.
Then Sophia.
Then Heinrich.
Lukas’s father answered quietly.
“I wondered when you’d call.”
I switched to German.
“So you knew I understood.”
A long silence.
Then Heinrich whispered:
“Not until Sunday.”
“How?”
“You flinched when Ingrid said you would raise the baby.”
He had noticed.
Then:
“Evelyn, there’s something you need before dinner.”
“What?”
“A copy of Lukas’s agreement with Sophia.”
My stomach tightened.
“What agreement?”
May you like
He answered in English.
“The one my wife doesn’t know I kept.”
