Chapter 2

Rowan came home late that night.

I was sitting on the living room couch, the manila envelope on the cushion beside me. He pushed the door open, bringing in the scent of Brielle's laundry detergent.

"She was a wreck," he said, kicking off his soaked shoes. "You know how she gets when she spirals. I had to stay until she settled."

I didn't raise my voice or cry.

"She's thirty two, Rowan. She's not that scared little orphan anymore. She's a grown woman with a leaky basement who needs to call a plumber. You don't walk out on your wife's last appointment before she gives birth to go play handyman."

"Don't make me the bad guy," he said defensively. "You know how hard she's had it. She lost her parents and her husband, and she's raising a kid alone. I'm the only family she has left."

"And what about our family?" I asked. "The one you built. The baby growing inside me right now?"

He sighed. "I don't want to fight tonight. I'm tired."

As he walked past me toward the stairs, his phone buzzed, and he had it out in a second.

Brielle again.

"Thank you for tonight. Theo loved your pancakes. He wants to know if you can come to his parent teacher night Friday. He told his teacher you're his uncle. So cute!"

I watched his face soften as he typed back: "Wouldn't miss it."

Upstairs, in the nursery we'd painted together, the crib sat empty, the mobile hung still, and the little clothes I'd folded were stacked by size.

Rowan hadn't set foot in that room in three months.

I took out my phone and opened my private bank account, the one Rowan didn't know about, holding the untouched inheritance my late grandmother had left me.

It was not a small number.

All those years, I had let him play the struggling founder and pour our shared savings into his almost bankrupt startup. While he got to feel like the provider, I quietly paid off the mortgage, kept the utilities on, and covered every bill.

And what did he buy me with all that freedom?

An empty chair at every appointment, and a husband off making pancakes for another woman's kid while his own daughter sat in my belly.

I closed the banking app, opened a travel site, and booked a one way ticket to Charleston for two weeks out.