After the Storm The Billionaire's Forgotten Wife

I forbade Brian Simmons from bringing the housekeeper's daughter home to live with us. He agreed to my face, then kept her tucked away in a private place behind my back.

Everyone said how lucky I was. Married into money, and carrying twins on top of it.

But the day I gave birth, I hemorrhaged, and Brian was off celebrating that woman's birthday.

My mother sat collapsed in the hospital corridor, crying as she called him over and over. His phone stayed switched off the whole time.

It was only later that I learned the housekeeper's daughter had been his since she was eighteen.

I took the twins back to my mother's place. When Brian came after me, I was in the middle of changing a diaper.

He stood in the doorway in a tailored suit, a baby toy dangling from one hand.

"Fee, come home with me."

He held the toy out. "I know I was wrong."

I looked up at him and gave a small smile. "Wrong about what?"

He froze, as if he hadn't expected me to ask.

I took the toy and dropped it into the trash right in front of him.

"Wrong about"

I dusted off my hands, my voice very quiet. "You should have married her in the first place, instead of tricking me into having your children."

Brian bent down to fish the toy back out.

The trash can tipped over. Baby wipes and a used diaper rolled out and stuck to his handmade Italian leather shoes.

He didn't move.

"Fee," he said, dropping his voice low, "I know you're angry"

"I'm angry?"

I scooped up the younger one. The little thing had just finished his bottle and let out a milky burp. "Angry about what?"

He straightened and glanced around the living room.

The changing table, the formula tins, baby rattles scattered across the floor.

His mother had come by last week, said the place was too cramped, told me to move back.

"The thing with Sloane, I handled it badly."

"Sloane."

I repeated the name. "What's her name?"

Brian's face changed.

"You don't even know her full name, and you rented her a place at the Sandalwood Residences?"

I patted the baby's back. "Thirty-eight hundred a month. More than the rent on this whole building of my mother's."

"The place is in her name," he said.

My hand stopped.

The baby started fussing, so I shifted him to my other shoulder and kept patting.

"In her name," I said. "Brian, you bought her a house?"

He was silent for two seconds.

Those two seconds were enough.

The older one suddenly started crying in the crib, his voice cracking, arms and legs kicking everywhere.

My hands were full. Brian stepped over on instinct, leaned down to pick him up, then pulled his hands back halfway.

He didn't know how to hold a baby.

We'd always had a nanny at home. He'd never changed a single diaper.

"You should go," I said.

He stayed standing by the crib.

The older one was crying himself red in the face, and Brian just looked on, helpless, his suit cuff brushing against the dried milk on the crib rail.

"Fee, the doctor said your recovery's been rough. Two children can't go without their mother."

I set the younger one in the rocker, walked over, and lifted the older one out.

The moment he was in my arms he went quiet, his little face burrowing into my chest.

"They never had a father to begin with," I said.

Brian's head snapped up.

"How many times did you sign?"

I soothed the baby, my voice low. "The checkup when I fainted, the nurse called you. You were in a meeting. The time he ran a fever and was admitted, Sloane answered your phone. And the day I was hemorrhaging, where were you?"

The older one started chewing on his hand. I gently eased it out.

"My mother knelt on the floor and called you forty-three times."

Brian's throat moved.

"That day was Sloane's birthday."

"You went to Miami with her," I said. "A helicopter there and back, just to have dinner."

He spoke. "I'd booked it before any of this. There was no getting out of it"

"No getting out of it?"

I laughed. "She's been with you since she was eighteen. Eight years. And you couldn't get out of one birthday?"

The living room went quiet, just the baby babbling in the rocker.

In the kitchen my mother had been chopping pork ribs. The knife stopped.

Brian looked me in the eye. "Fee, I've ended it with her."

I said nothing.

"I gave her a house. Call it a settlement."

He took a step closer. "I promise, from now on"

"You promise."

I gave a small laugh. "Last time you promised you wouldn't move her in. Then you turned around and rented her an apartment. The time before that you promised you'd be done with her before the babies came. Three days after I gave birth, she sent me a photo of the two of you."

Brian froze.

"You want to guess what she sent?"

I set the older one down and turned to face him. "She sent the one of you tying a scarf around her neck. That scarf was mine. The Van Cleef one I bought."

The color drained out of his face completely.

"Brian." I leaned against the side of the crib. "When you were chasing me, you said you were single. When you proposed, you said there was no one in your heart but me. When I was pregnant with twins, throwing up until it was bile, you put your hand on my belly and said the four of us would have a good life together."

The younger one fussed in the rocker. I went over and picked him up.

His little mouth crumpled, ready to cry again, so I turned aside, lifted my shirt, and fed him.

All that was left in the living room was the older one sucking on his fingers.

Brian still stood where he was. There was garbage stuck to his leather shoes. He didn't even glance down at it.

"That scarf." He spoke. "I didn't know she took that picture on the sly."

"Of course you didn't."

I pressed my hand to the back of the younger one's head. "You didn't know she sent me the photo. You didn't know she used your phone at two in the morning to send me voice messages. You didn't know she photographed my prenatal reports and showed them to her mother."

Brian took a step forward.

The younger one was still nursing when he suddenly hiccupped, white froth spilling at the corner of his mouth.

I took a cloth and wiped him, then set the cloth down on the coffee table, next to the divorce papers weighted there.

My mother had drawn them up for me yesterday. An old friend of hers is a divorce lawyer.

Brian saw them.

He slid them out and flipped through a couple of pages.

"You want to divorce me?"

"It's all written out in the agreement."

"The children go to you?"

"They go to me."

He pinched the edge of the paper, pressing his thumb over the crease again.

"Fee, the babies are still so small. You, on your own"

"On my own?"

I laughed. "The day I hemorrhaged, the nurse held the babies up for me to see. She said, look, Mommy, they're both fine. I was lying on the operating table, the anesthesia worn off, shaking all over from the pain. The doctor asked where the family was. The nurse said she couldn't reach anyone."

The younger one had finished. I sat him up to burp him.

His little head slumped soft against my shoulder, drool soaking into my collar.

"That day, my mother signed."

I said, "Her hand shook so hard she couldn't write. The doctor said without a signature both the mother and the babies were in danger. She gripped her right wrist with her left hand and traced each stroke for half a minute."

Brian stayed silent.

And into that silence my mother came out of the kitchen.

She'd taken off her apron. She still had the kitchen knife in her hand, bits of meat clinging to the blade.

"Brian," my mother said. "Are you leaving or not?"

He glanced at her.

My mother is five foot two, barely up to his shoulder, and she had that knife raised, grease spattered on her cuff.

"Mom!"

"Who's your mother."

She slapped the knife down on the shoe cabinet. "Three years. You've set foot in this house fewer than five times. When Fee was so dehydrated from morning sickness with her first pregnancy and called you to come get her, you said you were with a client. When she started cramping and bleeding in the middle of the night, she called 911 herself, and when the ambulance got downstairs she couldn't climb onto the stretcherthe security guard had to carry her up."

Brian's lips moved, but nothing came out.

My mother dragged in a breath. "You try to take An away today, I'll cut you down first, then cut myself down after."

Theodore started coughing, a wet rattle in his throat, his little face going red.

I set Job down in the rocker and lifted Theodore, patting his back.

A bit of phlegm came up, and then he started crying again.

Brian came over and reached out to take him.

I didn't give him over.

"Stay where you are."

His hand stopped in midair.

"You've got her perfume on you," I said. "Gucci Bloom. The one she's always spraying."

He lowered his hand.

"You saw her before you came?"

He said nothing.

"What did she say?"

"She said" Brian's voice was very low. "She's pregnant."

The living room went so quiet there was nothing but Theodore's hiccupping.

My mother's knife hit the floor. A single clang.

I patted Theodore's back.

"How far along?"

"A little over two months."

"Two and a half months younger than these two," I said, and I smiled. "Brian, you work fast."

His head snapped up. "An, I never touched her"

"Then whose baby is she carrying?"

His lips trembled.

"She said it was that night, the night you gave birth, in Miami"

"That night?" I cut him off. "I was hemorrhaging, and the two of you were getting a room in Miami?"

He didn't deny it.

Theodore started crying again, so I walked him back and forth in my arms.

I walked to the window. Down below, a young couple pushed a stroller past, the husband bending to tie his wife's shoe.

"You should go," I said.

"An"

"Go home and cook for Sloane." I kept my back to him. "She's pregnant. Don't let her go hungry."

No sound behind me.

A long time passed before I heard his dress shoe turn on the floor, then come down on a dropped diaper with a wet, sticky squelch.

He left.

My mother crouched to pick up the knife. It had chipped against the floor, and she turned the chipped edge toward herself.

"An," she said, "I stewed pork ribs for you."

I carried Theodore back over.

Job had fallen asleep in the rocker, his little mouth opening and closing.

I laid Theodore down beside him, two identical little heads tucked side by side.

"Mom," I said, "tomorrow find my household register for me."

My mother had her back to me, chopping scallions, the knife rising and falling.

"All right."

I went to the coffee table and picked the divorce agreement up off the floor.

Brian had taken it when he left, then dropped it again by the door.

Job rolled over, his little fist landing on Theodore's face.

Theodore grunted but didn't wake, just turned his face away.

I sat on the arm of the couch and watched them.

My phone rang.

Sloane had sent a voice message. Twenty seconds.

I tapped it open.

Her voice was soft and sweet. "Sis, is Brian over at your place? I made soup and I'm waiting for him to come home and have some."

I set the phone face-down on the coffee table.

The screen was still lit. She'd changed her profile picture to the photo of Brian tying that scarf around her neck.

On the windowsill, the pothos my mother kept trailed down, water beading at the tips of the leaves.

I tapped the message and listened to it again.

"Sis, is Brian over at your place? I made soup and I'm waiting for him to come home and have some."

My mother poked her head out of the kitchen. "Who is it?"

"No one." I turned the phone off.

First thing the next morning I went to the law firm. That old friend of my mother's, James, had done divorce cases for twenty years, her office walls covered in client thank-you plaques. She read through the agreement three times, then tapped her finger on the line that said "division of assets."

"His pre-marriage villa, you can't touch."

"I know."

"But the condo he bought after the wedding, and his shares in that company, those split fifty-fifty. The house he bought for that woman, you can claim repayment on that."

I nodded.

Bridget James pushed her reading glasses up. "Did he sign?"

"No."

"Then we send the legal notice first."

At two that afternoon the notice was delivered to Brian's office. At three he called; I muted it. At four he called my mother's phone, and she answered, said only, "Fiona's nursing the baby," and hung up. By five-thirty he was downstairs, the car window rolled down, Sloane in the passenger seat.

She had on a loose dress, one hand resting on her stomach.

I was on the balcony bringing in the laundry, the younger one crying inside. His mother had come too, standing at the building's entrance with two boxes of imported formula, and she looked up and saw me.

"Fiona," Juliana Simmons called. "Come down. There's something I want to say to you."

I carried the younger one down. She stood at the edge of the flower bed in her heels and looked me over.

"The twins have lost weight."

"They haven't."

"Brian told me. The thing with that woman was wrong of him, but he's already dealt with it."

I shifted Job to my other shoulder. "Dealt with it how?"

"Gave her a sum of money. Told her to get rid of the baby."

I looked at her.

She smoothed her hair. "Fiona, you've made your scene, you've gotten it out of your system. It's about time you came back. Two little boys can't grow up without a father, and a young woman moving back to her mother's with her children, that doesn't sound good if it gets around."

"Gets around?"

I let out a small laugh. "Mom, your son kept a woman on the side for eight years. Does that sound good if it gets around?"

Her face changed. "Fiona, is that any way to speak to me?"

Job woke at the noise and started crying. I patted him and turned to go back, and behind me she called out, "You think hard about this! Where will you go once you're divorced? You know perfectly well what your mother's place has to offer."

I shut the building door.

Brian didn't come back that night. Early the next morning his brother showed up, Charles Simmons, five years younger than Brian, coasting along at one of the family's subsidiaries. He crouched outside our door smoking a cigarette, tapping the ash onto the floor tiles my mother kept polished to a shine.

"Fiona, my brother sent me."

"Sent you to talk me round?"

"Sent me to get the agreement signed." He stubbed out the cigarette. "Property goes the way you want, the kids are yours, and he'll pay double child support."

I held Theodore and watched him.

"He says you can have the house and the car, plus thirty percent of the company shares. As long as you don't take it to court."

"He's afraid of court?"

Charles lit another. "Fiona, my father's health isn't good. If this ends up in the news, the old man won't be able to take it."

I said nothing.

He stood up. "I brought the agreement. Look it over, and if there's no problem, sign."

The agreement lay open on the coffee table. My mother brought over a glass of water, her hand a little unsteady. I read through it. It gave up even more than Bridget had drafted, an extra half of a commercial unit thrown in.

"This generous?"

Charles crushed out the cigarette. "He says, call it compensation for you."

The pen sat beside the agreement.

I looked at the two little ones asleep in the rocker, then at my mother. Her back was to me, wiping down the stove, the rag squeaking against the tile.

I picked up the pen.

"Fiona," Charles said, "anything you need from now on, just come to me."

"That won't be necessary."

The name written out, the last stroke down, Theodore whimpered in his sleep.

Charles gathered up the agreement, walked to the door, and turned back.

"Fee, the thing with that woman, Brian really did keep it from you"

"I know."

"He meant to end it, but she said she was pregnant"

"He couldn't end it."

Charles was quiet for a moment, then he left.

The second the door shut, my mother came over and took the cup out of my hand. Only then did I notice I'd crushed it out of shape, hot water all over my fingers. I hadn't felt the burn.

The younger one woke up wailing, mouth wide open, and the older one woke to the noise and started crying too.

I scooped one into each arm and sat down on the couch.

My mother handed me a bottle, and when I took it I saw her eyes had gone red.

"Mom."

"Mm."

"From now on it's just the four of us in this place."

She untied her apron and wiped her eyes with it. "Mm. I'll go make some pork ribs for you."

The range hood started up in the kitchen. The two little ones each took a bottle. The older one drifted off mid-feed, nipple still in his mouth. The younger one had energy to spare, kicking his legs while he ate, one little hand fisted in the front of my shirt and refusing to let go.

I laid the older one gently back in the rocker. Outside the curtains the sky had gone fully dark.

My phone buzzed once.

A text from Brian. Two words: It's signed.

I didn't reply.

Another came through: Fee, I'm sorry.

I opened Sloane's contact. The scarf photo was still her picture. I hit delete and dropped her number into the block list.

The younger one burped up milk all over my shoulder.

I wiped it with a cloth and held him a little closer.

Outside the window a pair of headlights flared, swung around the corner, and were gone.

When Bridget handed me the divorce decree, the gold lettering on the cover caught the light and stung my eyes.

I took it and flipped it open. The photo had been retaken last week, hair thrown into a careless ponytail, the shadows under my eyes not fully faded.

"I'll follow up on the property transfer myself. You won't need to show your face again."

I shoved the decree into my bag. Before I could zip it, my phone rang.

It was Charles.

"Fee, my brother told me to askhe had some things for the kids sent over. Where do you want them?"

"Throw them out."

A few seconds of silence on the other end. "...There's diapers, formula, that kind of thing. Several boxes."

"I said throw them out."

I hung up and walked out. Bridget came after me with an umbrella. It had started to rain outside, not hard, a fine drizzle settling on my hair. I didn't open it.

While I was waiting at the bus stop, an old woman beside me was pushing a stroller. The baby inside was wrapped in a goose-yellow blanket, two or three months old at most, kicking happily. The old woman bent to pick up a fallen pacifier, and without thinking I reached out to steady the stroller handle for her.

She straightened up and looked me over. "How old's your little one?"

"Twins. A little over three months."

"Oh, that's hard work." She patted my arm. "Raising them on your own?"

"Mm."

"Where's their father?"

I gave a small smile and said nothing. The bus came. I got on and took the window seat in the last row. The decree pressed against my thigh through the bag, one hard, stiff corner.

Back home I dropped the decree into the drawer of the TV stand. My mother was washing the younger one's bottom. The older one lay on the play mat, lifting his head twice before flopping back down, drool smeared across his face.

"You get it?"

"I got it."

She didn't ask anything else, just wrapped the younger one up and handed him to me. Something was off with him today. The moment he touched my arm he started bawling, voice gone hoarse, little legs kicking everywhere. I carried him around the room twice. No good. I tried feeding him. He wouldn't take it. I changed his diaper. He only cried harder.

My mother picked up the older one. "Is something hurting him?"

I touched his forehead. No fever.

His belly was tight and round. I pressed it and he kicked even harder. My mother said it might be gas, so I went to the kitchen, poured hot water into a milk storage bag, and laid it on his stomach. He squirmed a couple of times and went quiet.

Quiet for maybe ten seconds. Then the crying started again.

The older one fussed and whimpered at the noise, and my mother held him in one arm while patting the younger one's back with the other, sweat beading on her forehead.

The doorbell rang.

I didn't have a free moment for it. It rang twice more.

"Fee, open the door, it's me."

Brian's voice.

My mother glanced at me. I didn't move, the younger one in my arms. The older one started crying in her arms too, both of them at once, the living room like a pot boiling over.

"Fee, I'll just leave the things by the door, all right?"

I said nothing. The crying was too loud, the younger one screaming at the top of his lungs, his little face flushed purple-red, even his toes curled in.

It went quiet at the door for a while. Then I heard plastic boxes dragging across the floor. One trip, two, three. When he'd finished, the footsteps stopped at the door.

"Fee, the younger one's stomach is bad. I switched the formula to the hydrolyzed kind. Don't feed him the wrong one."

I turned around with the younger one in my arms, my back to the door.

The footsteps outside moved away.

The younger one wailed a while longer, finally wore himself out, and dropped off to sleep with hiccupping little sobs. I laid him on the bed and tucked the blanket around him. My shoulders ached too much to lift.

My mother coaxed the older one to sleep too, and the two of them lay side by side, the same little faces, even the shape of their mouths the same in sleep.

I went to the kitchen for a drink of water. Passing the door, I looked out through the peephole.

Six big cardboard boxes were stacked in the hallway, lined up neatly. On the top one was a sticky note, the handwriting Brian's.

"Younger one gets the hydrolyzed formula, older one's fine on the regular. Bought two boxes of diapers in one size. Leave the toys until they're bigger."

I peeled the note off and crushed it.