Chapter 3

I woke before dawn with one hand over my mouth and barely reached the bathroom.

By ten, the dizziness had followed me to Everlight. Sarah found me gripping the retouching desk while the portraits on the monitor blurred into red and green smears.

"You’re going to a doctor," she said, taking the tablet from my hand. "The Hale requests can wait an hour."

They could not, but my body gave me no vote.

My physician studied the blood results twice before turning the monitor toward me. "Linnea, you’re pregnant. Approximately six weeks."

I lowered my hand to my stomach.

No sign that anything had changed.

Yet somewhere beneath my palm was the child I had stopped believing I could have.

During the first years of our marriage, Stellan and I had tried everything.

Appointments. Injections. Tests.

Month after month, I had watched hope disappear from another negative result.

Each time, Stellan held me. "We’re enough, Linnea," he would say. "I don’t need children."

For six years, I had believed he was giving up fatherhood for me.

Now six Christmas portraits filled my mind.

Stellan holding baby Arden.

Stellan carrying him on his shoulders.

Stellan smiling beneath the words THE HALE FAMILY.

He had never shared my childless life.

While I cried after failed treatments, he went somewhere else and became a father.

For years, I had imagined this room opening into a different life: Stellan rushing through the door, he would cry, hold me, and say we finally had everything we wanted.

But Stellan already had what he wanted.

He had Maris. He had Arden.

And on Saturday, he planned to give them a surprise.

The doctor handed me a printed report. "Do you want an extra copy for your husband?"

I folded the single page before placing it in my bag. "No."

When I returned to Everlight, Sarah was waiting outside my office.

"Maris added more requests."

A new section was highlighted in yellow: JEWELRY CLOSE-UP—CLIENT PROVIDED HEIRLOOM.

Maris had requested a low camera angle facing the tree. She wanted advice on how to capture a man kneeling without blocking the ring box, and she had paid for the raw video files.

My stomach turned again, but this time nausea had nothing to do with pregnancy.

Stellan’s surprise. A couple’s portrait. A man on one knee. Jewelry.

The meaning was obvious.

"He’s going to propose," I said.

Sarah’s face tightened.

Perhaps he planned to give Maris a ring.

Perhaps he planned to promise her a future.

Perhaps "our last photo as a secret family" meant they were ready to become public.

My first instinct was to cancel everything.

Let Maris wait in an empty studio.

Let Stellan’s perfect surprise fall apart.

But if I stopped the session, Stellan could deny what he had planned.

He could call it a misunderstanding.

He could tell me the jewelry belonged to Arden.

I had listened to his lies for six years.

I would not leave room for one more.

"Approve it," I said.

When Sarah left, I removed the pregnancy report from my bag. The black letters looked too small to contain the future I had once wanted so desperately.

PREGNANCY: POSITIVE.

GESTATIONAL AGE: APPROXIMATELY SIX WEEKS.

I slid it beneath Saturday’s booking sheet. Maris’s notes covered the top page—tree placement, camera angle, heirloom jewelry—while my child existed unseen underneath.

Stellan texted as I aligned the corners.

Saturday may run late. The client wants dinner afterward. Don’t wait up.

I read it twice.

Inside my bag was proof that I was carrying his child.

On my desk was proof that he planned to kneel before another woman.

I did not reply.

I placed the pregnancy report beneath the Hale family’s appointment form.

For six years, Stellan had been allowed to edit every version of his life before it reached me.

He chose the explanation, the timing, and which details I was strong enough to hear.

Saturday would be the first event he could not revise in advance.