Chapter 3: Helen’s Table
Helen Park did not gasp at the video. She took notes.
“Pregnancy by itself is not a court order,” she said. “Fraud, financial entanglement, marital misconduct, and any attempt to coerce you into a diminished role—that is language we can use. Do you share accounts? Property? Business interests?”
I listed them. Joint house. Joint brokerage. A small design consultancy in my name. Julian’s stake in his late friend Daniel’s firm—Chloe’s late husband—where Julian had become “interim support” after the funeral. Helen’s pen paused.
“Support,” she repeated. “We will want timelines of that interim.”
I signed retainers. I authorized freezes and notices. I requested copies of every fertility record under my name and any insurance claim Julian had filed without me. Helen said the first rule was not to confront Chloe alone, not to visit the porch again, not to negotiate with Evelyn in text. “They want a scene,” Helen said. “We will give them a schedule.”
Outside, Mara waited with a sandwich I could not eat. “Evelyn always hated you,” she said gently. “Now she has a prop.”
“The prop is a child,” I said. “I won’t pretend that doesn’t complicate the morality play they want.”
“You can refuse to be the villain without becoming their furniture,” Mara said.
I nodded. Furniture had been my assigned role long enough.
Julian found me in the parking garage. He had the undone-shirt energy replaced by a navy jacket and the smell of Chloe’s perfume still clinging like a bad argument. “Helen Park?” he said, nodding at the building. “You’re escalating.”
“You escalated when you unbuttoned your shirt in a widow’s house and called it plumbing.”
He flushed. “I won’t abandon my child.”
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“Then don’t,” I said. “Abandon the fantasy that I will host that reality as your grateful companion. Move your things to wherever Evelyn is heating broth. The locks change this afternoon.”
He called it cruelty. I called it the first accurate label of the week and drove away while he still had his mouth open.
