Schuyler Square Day 71 Hello, Daddy

Chelsea tried to stand still as she waited in the massive front hall of Schuyler Manor. Honestly, it looked like something right out of The Beverly Hillbillies with the black and white tile floor, the curving staircase, the enormous crystal chandelier. Catching a glimpse of herself in a gilt-edged mirror that took up most of one wall, Chelsea almost fainted. She looked as out of place as a dairy cow standing in a jewelry store. Chelsea straightened her shoulders and lifted her chin. She had every right to be there. After all, her husband had to find out that he was going to be a daddy sooner or later.

"Chelsea." Peter entered the hall and gave her a spectacularly flat greeting. "What is it? Do you need money or what?"

She blinked back tears. While she naturally hadn't expected him to give her a kiss or even a hug she had hoped for something a little warmer than the glacial tone in Peter's voice. "Hello, Peter," Chelsea said softly. "I, um, need to talk to you."

An annoyed twitch passed over Peter's mouth and Chelsea tried not to burst into tears. This was the man who had promised to love and cherish her and now she was just some kind of minor annoyance to him. Sniffing loudly, Chelsea channeled her inner Glenn Close from Fatal Attraction. She would not be ignored. Remember that, she thought. "Well, what is it?" Peter asked impatiently.

"Is there some place we can talk privately?"

Peter sighed loudly. "Let's go to the den." Turning, he led the way down a long hallway lined with doors. Chelsea hadn't seen so many doors in one hallway since the summer she worked at a chambermaid at the Come On Inn motel. They entered a walnut paneled room. Peter shut the door, pointed at a chair for Chelsea and leaned against a desk, his arms crossed in front of the wide chest she knew so well. "Well?"

Chelsea perched on the edge of a soft leather chair and willed Glenn Close to surface. "I have some news for you, Peter. I'm pregnant."

All of the color drained from Peter's face. "You're what?"

"Pregnant. With your child." Chelsea kept her voice steady as she spoke. It had to be Peter's baby. She'd slept with one other man one lousy time--and it had been lousy--during the entire course of her marriage to Peter. The odds were highly in favor of Peter being this baby's daddy, not the creep from her dreadful one night stand.

"You can't be. We tried to have kids for years and nothing ever happened."

"Apparently we got it right a few months ago."

Peter looked like it was going to throw up, a condition Chelsea had become very well acquainted with over the past few weeks. "I don't know what to say."

"Why don't you try: I'm coming home so we can get ready for the birth of our baby?" Chelsea suggested.

Peter stared at her. "Because first I want to make sure that baby is really mine."