PART 2
“Is this Nora Blake?” the woman asked.
“Yes.”
There was a long silence on the other end.
Then she whispered, “My name is Elise.”
Every sound in the coffee shop seemed to disappear.
The hiss of the espresso machine. The clatter of cups. The quiet conversation from the table beside me.
All of it faded beneath the pounding of my heart.
I tightened my grip on the phone.
“Felix told me you moved to Boston.”
A bitter laugh escaped her.
“He told me you knew about us.”
For several seconds, neither of us spoke.
Two women connected by the same man and separated by two different lies.
“I didn’t know anything until last night,” I said.
“What happened last night?”
I looked down at the notebook in front of me.
Felix’s trips.
The family dinner.
The laughter.
His mother’s cold promise.
“They announced your pregnancy in front of me,” I said. “They spoke in German because they thought I couldn’t understand.”
Elise inhaled sharply.
“What exactly did they say?”
“Felix said you were almost five months pregnant. His mother said they would make me raise the baby.”
The silence that followed was different.
It was not confusion.
It was fear.
“Oh God,” Elise whispered.
“What?”
“Nora, listen to me carefully. Do not tell Felix that we spoke.”
I sat straighter.
“Why?”
“Because I think he’s planning to take my baby.”
A chill moved through me.
Elise began speaking quickly, as though she had been holding the words inside for months.
She had never moved to Boston. She lived less than forty minutes from our house.
Felix had contacted her nearly a year earlier, claiming our marriage was over but that I was emotionally unstable and refusing to accept the separation.
He told her he slept in the guest room.
We did not have a guest room.
He told her he was waiting for the right moment to leave because he feared I might hurt myself.
Then, when Elise discovered she was pregnant, Felix changed.
At first, he acted thrilled.
He promised to divorce me, marry her, and raise the child together.
But two months later, he began asking strange questions.
Did she have life insurance?
Had she prepared a will?
Would she agree to name his mother as the baby’s temporary guardian in case of an emergency?
When Elise refused, Felix became furious.
“He said pregnancy was making me irrational,” she told me. “Then he started keeping records of everything I did.”
“What kind of records?”
“If I cried, he wrote it down. If I missed a doctor’s appointment, he took a screenshot. Once, I forgot to turn off the stove, and he photographed it before helping me.”
My stomach twisted.
“He’s building a case against you.”
“That’s what I think.”
I looked through the coffee shop window at the people hurrying along the sidewalk.
Only twenty-four hours earlier, I had believed my greatest problem was an unfaithful husband.
Now I realized Felix had been planning something far more calculated.
“Why call me?” I asked.
“Because yesterday, Felix left a folder at my apartment.”
“What was inside?”
“Copies of your medical records.”
My fingers went numb.
For six years, I had shared every fertility test, every procedure, and every diagnosis with my husband.
I had trusted him with the most painful parts of my life.
“Why would he have those?”
“There was also a psychological evaluation with your name on it.”
“I’ve never had a psychological evaluation.”
“I know.”
My breath caught.
Elise continued.
“The document says you suffer from severe depression caused by infertility. It says you have an unhealthy obsession with becoming a mother and that caring for a baby would stabilize you.”
“That’s insane.”
“It gets worse.”
I closed my eyes.
“Tell me.”
“The evaluation recommends that you be placed under family supervision after the baby is born.”
I felt as though the floor had shifted beneath me.
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know. But Felix’s mother’s name is listed as the person responsible for supervising you.”
Ingrid.
The woman who had criticized my clothes, mocked my cooking, and smiled while discussing how they would force a newborn into my arms.
This was never about giving me a child.
It was about controlling all three of us.
“Can you send me photographs of the documents?” I asked.
“I already took them. But Nora, there’s something else inside the folder.”
A chair scraped behind me, and I flinched so violently that coffee spilled from my cup.
“What?”
“A petition for emergency custody. Felix claims I’m addicted to alcohol and prescription medication.”
“Are you?”
“No. I stopped drinking the moment I learned I was pregnant. I don’t even take painkillers.”
“Then he has no evidence.”
“He has photographs of empty wine bottles in my recycling bin.”
“Were they yours?”
“No.”
The answer came immediately.
“He brought them to my apartment last week. He said they were left over from a dinner with clients. I found them in the bin after he left.”
The cruelty of it was breathtaking.
Felix was not simply preparing to leave me for Elise.
He was preparing to destroy her reputation, take her baby, and use my infertility to turn me into a grateful, obedient caretaker.
And when I became inconvenient, Ingrid’s fake evaluation would make it easy to declare me unstable too.
“What does Felix want?” I whispered.
“He wants the child without either mother.”
The words hung between us.
I thought about the family dinner again.
His father’s laugh.
Sabine’s amused expression.
Ingrid’s confidence.
They had not been reacting to a sudden pregnancy announcement.
They had been discussing a plan they already understood.
“Elise, where are you right now?”
“At home.”
“Is Felix there?”
“No. He said he had a meeting.”
Felix had kissed my forehead that morning and told me he was going to the office.
“Pack a bag,” I said.
“What?”
“Take your identification, medical records, and anything valuable. Go somewhere he cannot find you.”
“I don’t have anywhere.”
“Yes, you do.”
The words left my mouth before I could reconsider them.
“Come to me.”
Elise went silent.
“You want me to come to your house?”
“No. Felix could return at any moment. Meet me at the Riverside Hotel. Use the underground entrance. I’ll book a room under a different name.”
“Why are you helping me?”
I stared at the wedding ring on my finger.
“Because whatever Felix has done to us, that baby is innocent.”
Twenty minutes later, I left the coffee shop and drove to the Riverside Hotel.
On the way, I called my oldest friend, Claire, who worked as a family-law attorney.
I had not told her about the dinner.
I had not even told her Felix was cheating.
But when she heard the words forged psychological evaluation and emergency custody petition, her voice changed instantly.
“Do not confront him,” she said. “Do not sign anything. And do not bring Elise to your home.”
“I’m meeting her at a hotel.”
“Good. Photograph every document. Then send everything to me.”
“What if Felix realizes the folder is missing?”
“Elise should put it back exactly where she found it.”
“She already did.”
“Then he may not know yet.”
Yet.
That single word followed me into the hotel lobby.
Elise arrived fifteen minutes later wearing a gray coat over a loose blue dress. She was pale, exhausted, and visibly pregnant.
For years, I had imagined what I would do if I ever met my husband’s mistress.
I thought I might slap her.
Scream at her.
Demand to know how she could destroy another woman’s marriage.
Instead, when Elise stepped from the elevator and looked at me with terrified eyes, I saw someone who had been deceived as completely as I had.
She stopped several feet away.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
My throat tightened.
“I believed him.”
“So did I.”
That was all it took.
We entered the hotel room together.
Elise placed her phone on the table and showed me the photographs.
The first pages contained my fertility records.
The next document carried the logo of a private psychiatric clinic.
My full name appeared at the top.
Nora Blake.
Date of birth.
Home address.
It stated that I had been interviewed three times by a doctor named Marcus Hale.
I had never heard that name.
At the bottom was a signature that looked disturbingly similar to mine.
“That isn’t my signature,” I said.
Elise swiped to the next photograph.
The emergency custody petition was already completed.
Felix claimed Elise had threatened to disappear with the baby. He described her as unstable, reckless, and dependent on alcohol.
Then I saw the section naming the proposed temporary guardian.
Not Felix.
Ingrid Bauer.
Felix’s mother.
“Why would Ingrid take custody instead of Felix?” I asked.
Elise looked at me.
“I wondered the same thing.”
My phone rang.
Felix.
Both of us froze.
I let it ring twice before answering.
“Hello?”
“Where are you?” he asked.
His tone was light, but I heard the suspicion beneath it.
“At work.”
“I called your office.”
My mind raced.
“I stepped out for lunch.”
“It’s almost three.”
“I had a difficult morning.”
He was silent.
Then his voice softened.
“Are you feeling all right?”
For ten years, that voice had comforted me.
Now I heard what had always hidden underneath it.
Calculation.
“I’m fine.”
“Your manager said you called in sick.”
Elise covered her mouth.
I forced myself to laugh.
“I didn’t want to worry you. I had a migraine, so I went for coffee and took a walk.”
“Where?”
“Near the office.”
Another pause.
“Send me a picture.”
My blood ran cold.
“What?”
“A picture of you. I miss your face.”
Before I could answer, someone knocked on the hotel-room door.
Three slow knocks.
Elise’s eyes widened.
Felix spoke quietly through the phone.
“Nora, what was that?”
“Nothing. Someone dropped something in the hallway.”
The knocking came again.
Louder this time.
I approached the door and looked through the peephole.
A man in a dark suit stood in the hallway.
I did not recognize him.
“Nora?” Felix said.
“I need to go.”
“Wait—”
I ended the call.
The man knocked a third time.
“Hotel security,” he called. “We received a report of a medical emergency.”
Elise shook her head frantically.
“We didn’t call anyone.”
I remained silent.
The man reached into his jacket and took out a phone.
A second later, Elise’s phone began ringing on the table.
She looked at the screen.
The color drained from her face.
“Who is it?” I whispered.
She turned the phone toward me.
Felix.
The man outside knocked once more.
Then another voice came from farther down the hallway.
A woman’s voice.
Cold.
Familiar.
Speaking in German.
“Open the door, Elise. We know Nora is in there.”
It was Ingrid.
Elise grabbed my arm.
“How did they find us?”
I looked at the photographs on her phone.
Then at the door.
And suddenly I remembered Felix’s anniversary gift to me three weeks earlier.
A delicate silver necklace he had insisted I wear every day.
My hand rose slowly to the pendant resting against my chest.
Felix had not asked for a photograph because he missed my face.
He had already known exactly where I was.
The necklace was tracking me.
Outside the door, Ingrid spoke again.
But this time, she used perfect English.
“Nora, darling, open the door.”
Her voice softened into a smile.
“You and Elise have misunderstood everything.”
Then the hotel-room lock flashed green.
Someone outside had obtained a key.
The handle began to turn…………………
TO BE CONTINUED IN PART 3…
