Chapter 7 - The Nursery Completed
Two weeks later, the spring sun finally began to warm the stone porch of the Greenwich estate.
The contractors Edward had hired had finished repainting the master bedroom—stripping away every trace of Grant’s presence, replacing the dark mahogany furniture with clean, Scandinavian white oak and pale linens. But my favorite room in the house was now the nursery.
The ivory crib sat in the corner, assembled without Grant’s help, draped in a hand-quilted baby blanket Aunt Helen had stitched herself. The little wooden stars of the mobile turned slowly in the afternoon draft from the window.
I stood in the center of the room, my hand resting against my swollen stomach. I was eight months pregnant now. The physical heaviness was real, but the crushing weight in my chest—the constant, nagging anxiety of wondering where my husband was, who he was with, and what lies he was telling—was entirely gone.
My phone buzzed on the rocking chair.
It was a text from Edward Blackwood: “Papers signed, sealed, and filed. Grant has officially relocated to a studio apartment in Hoboken. He’s looking at three civil suits and a very quiet bankruptcy. It is over, Natalie.”
I stared at the screen, letting out a long, slow breath.
May you like
It was over.
The lies, the double life, the quiet gaslighting that had made me question my own sanity—all of it dismantled by a dead man's foresight and a daughter who finally decided to open her eyes.
