A woman ends up pregnant after a casual fling, but the father’s girlfriend has much more sinister intentions in this plot-driven suspense debut. A modern spin on Fatal Attraction meets The Hand that Rocks the Cradle, perfect for fans of The Last Mrs. Parrish.
Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from The Better Mother by Jennifer van der Kleut, which releases on February 10th 2026.
Still recovering from a devastating breakup, 34-year-old Savannah Mitchell has finally managed to put her life back together when she gets the shock of her life—after a brief fling with a man named Max, she is pregnant.
When she gets in touch to tell him, he reveals that he’s just gotten back together with his ex, Madison, and he will need time to break it to her. Surprisingly, Madison isn’t upset—in fact, she’s excited, and wants to help.
Max insists Madison has the best of intentions, but Savannah finds her efforts—popping by uninvited, demanding lifestyle changes, and pretty much trying to take over the pregnancy—anything but helpful. When Savannah finally stands up for herself, Madison’s treatment of her goes from casually cruel to downright dangerous.
All Savannah wanted to do was form a friendly co-parenting relationship with the father of her child—but his new girlfriend obviously has much more sinister plans in mind.
She has no plans to co-parent at all.
Chapter One
One, two, three.
Plus the one I’d taken right then and there in the dimly lit grocery store bathroom. That made four.
Four white plastic sticks sat perched on the edge of my sink. Each had a tiny window at its head.
In the window of the first one, taken at the store, two blue lines formed a cross.
When the second blue line first started to appear, my pulse had raced. Still sitting on the cold toilet seat, I picked it up and peered at it closely, carefully examining it from every angle. Maybe it was just a shadow. A reflection of the other blue line. A drop that had ricocheted into the window?
Eventually, there was no denying it— there were two blue lines, and they formed a cross.
I burst out of the bathroom stall before realizing my pants were still around my ankles. I ducked back in and pulled myself together, then speedwalked over to the family planning aisle— an unfortunate name, since I had no intention of planning a family. At least, not now. I grabbed three more boxes of tests, this time opting for the fancy digital ones that promised me a word rather than a bunch of blurry lines that obviously couldn’t be trusted. I took them home, chugged an entire can of La Croix, and peed on all of them.
Now here they were, all screaming at me at once, forcing me to face my future with a single word.
Pregnant.
I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to erase the image from my head, and walked out of my bathroom. It couldn’t be true. It just couldn’t.
I’ve finally lost it— the last remaining shred of my sanity. I’m seeing things.
I rubbed my eyes to clear the haze, walked back into the bathroom, and looked at them again.
Pregnant.
“What the hell?”
The buzz of my apartment’s intercom pulled me out of my stupor. A female voice floated into the room. “It’s me, let me in.”
I’d called Ellie after the first test, verbally vomiting a gush of unintelligible gibberish as I barreled out of the grocery store bathroom. She’d interrupted my tirade and said, “Savannah— calm down! I’m on my way. I’ll meet you at your apartment.”
I opened the door. Ellie’s eyebrows were sky-high as she waited for me to speak, but I couldn’t. She’d seen me speechless like this once before, almost a year ago, when I came home from work to find my boyfriend of several years— and all his belongings— gone from the apartment we’d shared.
“Okay, okay.” She took my hands in hers. I could see her wheels turning. “Well, people get false results all the time. Especially if you bought one of those really cheap tests. Maybe we should get you a better one, just in case.”
Dazed, still holding her hand, I led her into my bathroom. Like a sad, broken-down Vanna White, I presented her with the four tests, still lined up on the edge of the sink, like eager little soldiers reporting for duty.
Ellie’s blue-gray eyes just about popped out of her head; her jaw dropped. “Holy shit.”
“Yeah . . . holy shit,” I agreed, finally finding my voice.
My best friend turned to look at me, eyes wide. “Oh my God, Savvy—you’re pregnant. You’re going to have a baby.”
“I’m . . . I’m . . .” My tongue simply could not wrap itself around those words.
I was in such a delicate place. It had been just under a year since Jason had left, without warning. Rebuilding a life without him had not been easy, especially in a place as fast-moving and expensive as San Francisco.
Jason and I had been together for four years, living together for three and a half. We’d had a plan.
We both said we wanted kids, but not right away. We were focused on hitting milestones in our careers. Three years, we guessed—by then, the tech startup Jason worked for should be in more stable shape, likely thinking about their IPO, and hopefully I’d have been promoted to account manager at the marketing agency I worked for. That would be the best time, we decided— right around my thirty-third birthday. The biological clock would still be ticking, with at least a few good years left in the battery.
Marriage was never important to either of us. Jason’s parents had never bothered to get married, and their family had turned out just fine. On my side, my father had left my mother when I was a baby, before my tiny brain even had the ability to form memories of him. He’d left my mom in the lurch, and she’d had to work hard for our survival. What’s the point of getting married if it does nothing to keep two people together? We never heard from him again. My mom was forced to fight for years to obtain a divorce without having the slightest clue where to send the papers.
I wasn’t going to let that happen to me. Jason and I were together because we chose to be—and that choice was going to prove stronger than any legal document. Or so I thought.
So, a few weeks after I turned thirty-three, I made a reservation at our favorite seafood place on the Embarcadero, with gorgeous views of the water and Bay Bridge. I ordered a bottle of bubbly and our favorite oysters, and we raised a glass to our future.
Everything we’d wanted to achieve within the previous three years had happened. Jason’s company was in great shape, having just made The Verge’s list of the top one hundred tech startups to watch, and I’d been promoted to account manager about six months before. So I did it— I told him I was ready. I wanted to start trying for a baby. I was so excited.
The look on his face, the way he avoided my gaze, cleared his throat, and then downed his glass of wine a little too quickly—it all should have clued me in. Instead, I chalked it up to him being caught by surprise or feeling overwhelmed in the moment. It was just nervous excitement at the idea of tackling fatherhood, surely.
It never occurred to me that it had anything to do with doubts about us.
That night triggered an avalanche of problems I’d never expected. It started small, with tension on the drive back to our apartment— a few snowballs falling. That tension continued into the following week. I tried to broach the subject, get him to talk about what was bothering him, but he avoided my questions.
Over the next several weeks, the snowballs grew larger and came faster.
I confronted him. You said you wanted to start a family! You said you couldn’t wait to be a dad! Don’t you still want that? Don’t you want us to have a family of our own? Though he couldn’t give me an answer, I knew my dream was disappearing. I was devastated; frozen boulders rained down from the sky as hot tears flowed down my cheeks.
Finally, I came home from work one evening to a half-empty apartment. The rest of the mountain broke off, blocking out the sky as my world came crashing down on top of me.
Ellie crushed me into a hug. “Oh my God… oh my God,” she said over and over, rubbing my back. I stood there in her embrace, my body limp as a noodle. All I could think was— here I am, repeating history. Just like my mom before me, I was facing raising a child on my own, no father.
“Come.” Ellie pulled me back into the living room and onto the couch. She sat facing me, holding my hands again. “How are you feeling?”
I lifted my drooping chin. “This can’t be happening, right?”
“Oh, Savvy, it’s such a lovely surprise! You’ve always wanted to be a mother someday, right? Now you get to be!” Ellie’s voice was overinflated with cheerfulness. I knew she was trying to get me to look at the positive. The bright side. The silver lining, as they say. But I was definitely not ready for that.
“But why now? I looked forward to it before, when I was in love— when I had a man who said he wanted to have a family with me. But he changed his mind. Now, I have to— what?
Raise a child alone? Is this a joke?”
“Not a joke. It’s a gift, sweetie. A blessing.”
A bitter, sarcastic laugh escaped me, punctuated by hot tears. “I’m all alone, Ellie. Why would the universe give me a baby now, when I’m all alone? No one to share it with. No partner to help me, support me.”
Ellie pursed her lips. “First of all—you are not alone. You have me, and your mom, and loads of other friends. You have a great job and a great apartment that you afford all on your own now.”
I wiped my nose. “I’m a mess, Ellie.”
“You are not a mess. Not anymore. You’ve put your life back together, and you’re doing so well. Not to mention— let’s not forget it takes two to make a baby. What about the father? I’m guessing it’s that guy you met at the bistro? What was his name— Max?”
I let out a long, slow breath.
Max— the father of my baby.
As of now, he had no clue that the girl he’d picked up in a bar a couple of months ago was pregnant with his child. Would he even care?
I nodded. “It was such a casual thing. We only saw each other a few times, then we just kind of fell out of touch. I haven’t seen or talked to him in over a month.”
“So, you’re going to get in touch and tell him, right?” “Tell him?” I leaned forward and buried my face in my hands.
The irony of the situation didn’t escape me—in fact, it sounded like a voice in my head, laughing hysterically, over and over. I’d been so excited to have a baby with Jason. I’d had a beautiful vision of what our family could and should look like— and maybe, if I was being totally honest, I’d thought giving him that family would quell any fears of him ever leaving me.
Now here I was, pregnant without even trying, by a man I had no desire to hold on to whatsoever.
Hilarious, right?
“Don’t you think you should? How did you guys leave things?”
“We just kinda stopped reaching out after a while. He’d just broken up with his ex too. I think it was just a first try for both of us—you know, getting back out there again. Neither of us were looking for anything serious. It was just . . . fun.”
“But don’t you think he deserves to know?”
I let loose a groan. “It’s going to be weird. What if he thinks I… want to be together? Or what if he thinks we should be together? I don’t know if that’s what I want. I barely know him.”
“Well, maybe it’s not what he wants, either. But I think it’s the right thing to do. Plus, he can help support you and the baby.”
I sighed, trying not to let myself latch on to the idea. My father had never cared to support the child he’d left behind.
Would Max?
“I guess you’re right. I guess I should give him a call.” Jesus Christ. Way to go, Savannah.
