Chapter 3

Everlee added me on WhatsApp and kept spamming me with photos of her in meetings with Brantley, having lunch together, and flying with him on business trips.

She always added the same caption: [Don't worry, Emma. I'm taking care of Brantley for you.]

I showed Brantley the photos, and he waved it off, saying I was overreacting. "That's how Everlee is. Don't let it get to you."

But what Brantley didn't know was I'd dug into Everlee's history in Westhaven.

She got canned from her last job for spilling confidential info.

She wasn't back for nostalgia or old friends. She just had nowhere else to go.

But I never got the chance to say any of it. Because every time I brought up Everlee, Brantley shot me that same look: pure impatience.

The way he instinctively shielded Everlee was the same protective tone he once used for me, the one he wrote in his vows: "I'll protect you, always."

Except now, I wasn't the one he was protecting.

*****

It wasn't Everlee that made me decide. It was that baby.

Last November, I found out I was pregnant again.

The two red lines on the test were so bright that they almost hurt my eyes.

I sat on the bathroom floor, hugging my knees, lost in thought for a long time.

Then I called Brantley.

The first call went unanswered.

The second call went unanswered, too.

By the fourth call, he finally picked up. The background was loud. I could hear someone singing.

Brantley said, "What's up?"

I said, "Brantley, I need to tell you something."

"I'm in a meeting. Talk later."

"You're not in a meeting. I can hear people singing over there."

He paused. "It's business. Everlee landed a new client, so we're celebrating at the office. What is it?"

The sound of singing flooded through the phone, Everlee's laughter weaving right through it.

I parted my lips, but the words caught in my throat. "Never mind. Get back to it."

I hung up and then called him three more times, but all I got was a busy signal.

By the eighth call, the automated voice said, "The number you have dialed is powered off."

At 11 p.m. that night, I went to the hospital all alone.

I headed straight for the ER.

After they drew my blood, the doctor's face shifted. "Your hCG levels don't look right. I think you should get an ultrasound."

The ultrasound room was bright, and the probe felt icy cold as it pressed to my stomach.

The doctor stared at the screen for so long that I gripped the wrinkled sheets.

The doctor said, "The baby's gone."

That was all.

The doctor's mouth kept moving, saying I needed surgery ASAP, that waiting too long could be risky.

But I couldn't hear anything anymore. All I could hear was the buzzing in my ears.

I signed the surgery consent form.

My hand was trembling as I signed. My handwriting was shaky and all over the place, nothing like how I usually wrote.

The surgery was over by 2:30 a.m.

I lay in the hospital bed, staring up at the half-broken fluorescent light on the ceiling, its glow flickering on and off.

My phone lit up. It was Everlee's Moments update: a photo of her and Brantley raising their champagne glasses, with a backdrop of roses and balloons behind them.

The caption read: [Celebration night. Thanks, Brantley.]

I turned my phone face down.

The wound on my stomach burned.

The pain was so sharp that I curled up tight and pressed my face deep into the pillow.

I didn't cry. I bit down hard on the pillowcase, chewing until the taste of cotton filled my mouth, not making a single sound.

After that night, I made up my mind.

The next morning, I left the hospital and didn't go home. I headed straight for the office building downtown.

Evercrest Capital was on the seventh floor.

The receptionist asked who I was there to see.

I said, "Justin Chapman. He's my college classmate."

When Justin came out, he paused for a second, taken aback by how pale I looked. "Emma? Are you okay?"

I asked, "Justin, can I get my financial analyst certification reactivated?"

He looked at me for a few seconds, but didn't ask any more questions. "Yeah, you can. You'll need to retake two exams, and you could have it reactivated in as little as three months."

"Okay."

I sat down in his office and pulled a USB drive out of my bag. "These are seventeen industry research reports I've written over the past two years. Can you check if they're enough to qualify me for a position at Evercrest?"

Justin took the USB drive, and his expression shifted from confusion to shock. "You never really left this field, did you?"

"Brantley thought I did." I looked up, a faint smile tugging at my lips. "There's so much he doesn't know about me."