Chapter 3

Claire didn't come in. "Ethan told me about you. Your ex-husband got caught in bed with your best friend, so there's nothing you hate more than the other woman.

"But Ethan and I got married a year ago. To be exact, that makes you the other woman now, the one he keeps on the side back home."

Then her lips curved, and she held out a copy of their marriage license. "Kind of ironic, isn't it?"

My ears started to ring. Ethan had told someone else about the thing that hurt me most as if it were nothing, and I had become the very thing I hated most in the world.

I stared at the license and clenched my fists. "I didn't know you two were married."

Claire nodded. "There's a recording. I think you have a right to hear it."

She pressed play, and the first voice was her own. "Ethan, if you have regrets, I can let you go."

Under the rustling, a lighter clicked open and shut, over and over. I knew that sound too well. Ethan always did that without thinking when he was on edge.

His voice dropped low. "I don't regret it. With you, I don't have to guess, and I don't have to wait. You only have eyes for me, and it feels good."

"But Olivia wants to marry you now."

The recording went quiet for a long time before Ethan answered. "I never expected her to suddenly want to marry me."

"So what are you going to do?"

Ethan didn't answer.

"Weren't you going to tell her the truth the last time you flew back?"

My fingers tightened. Two months earlier, I had come down with a fever and dropped out of contact.

Mark Foster, who had vanished from my life years before, suddenly turned up and used a bottle of medicine as an excuse to hang around. Ethan flew back overnight, drove him off, and held me so fiercely it almost hurt.

"Olivia, don't you ever disappear on me again, and don't you dare look at anyone else."

When I saw the fear in his eyes, I let my guard down for the first time and gave myself to Ethan completely. That was the night I got pregnant.

On the recording, Claire kept talking. "But the second her ex showed up, you couldn't stand to lose her. If you can't let her go, then let's get divorced, and you can go back and marry her."

Ethan barely hesitated. "I'm not getting a divorce."

The recording went dead silent. After a long time, he spoke again, hoarse. "I'll handle it so Olivia never finds out. She stays back home, I fly back to see her every so often, and it won't touch our life together."

Then I understood. He already had a marriage he refused to give up, and I wasn't supposed to know the truth at all. All I had to do was stay home and wait for him to come find me, over and over.

Claire put her phone away. "The truth is, I'd have stepped aside for you. Too bad Ethan's the one who wouldn't."

She took her time smoothing her sleeves. "I'd rather he didn't find out I came to see you today."

I didn't answer her.

At the elevator, Claire turned around. "Ms. Lane, Ethan and I work at the best hospital in Alstern. We work together, and we live together. That's how it's always been."

Her eyes rested on me for a moment. "As for you, after everything you've been through, the fact that you can start over at all is a lot better than I expected."

The elevator doors closed, and the hallway went quiet again. I stood there for a long time.

Then I pulled out my suitcase and packed my things one by one, my clothes and my documents, and after that I started clearing out everything Ethan had left behind.

There was the watch he had given me, the medicine box he had stocked for me, and the sunflowers he had planted for me. Three years of it fit into a single cardboard box.

I carried the box downstairs and let go. It hit the bottom of the dumpster with a bang, and everything went down together.