Chapter 2

When I handed the pen back to the nurse, Evan started toward me.

“Nora, wait.”

Behind him, Lena drew a sharp breath and pressed a hand to her stomach.

Evan turned at once. A nurse brought over a wheelchair, and he helped Lena into it. He stayed beside her until they took her into an exam room.

He never looked at the report in my hand.

My doctor wouldn’t let me drive, so I took a cab home alone.

A copy of the yellow emergency contact card lay at the bottom of my bag.

Beneath the black line through Evan’s name, the ink beside Maya’s number was still fresh.

Evan didn’t call during the ride.

The only notification I received came from the hospital, confirming that my emergency contact had been updated.

At one in the morning, I opened the calendar Evan and I shared.

I didn’t search his email or try to guess his passwords. I only clicked on tonight’s entry: DOWNTOWN SITE INSPECTION.

The same excuse appeared again and again, usually from six in the evening until ten.

At the hospital, I had heard the nurse schedule Lena’s next prenatal appointment for Thursday morning, four weeks from now.

I moved to that date on our calendar.

SITE INSPECTION.

Four weeks earlier, there was another one.

Then another.

I didn’t look for anything else. I dragged the earliest entry to the center of the screen.

Fourteen months ago.

Back then, Evan and I were still trying to have a baby.

Ten months ago, I lost our first pregnancy.

Evan stayed at the hospital until eight that night, then left after receiving an “emergency call from the site.”

He came home at three in the morning and held me while I cried.

He said he had spent hours sitting alone in a parking lot because he couldn’t bear the thought of our empty nursery.

That night was marked SITE INSPECTION too.

The front door unlocked at 2:17 a.m.

Evan entered with his coat draped over one arm. His gaze dropped to my stomach before moving to the laptop.

“What did the doctor say?”

“My placenta is lying too low. I need to rest.” I pointed at the calendar. “Fourteen months?”

He didn’t ask whether I might bleed again. He stared at the date on the screen.

“You went through my things?”

“It’s our calendar. Answer me.”

Evan sat across from me and pressed both hands to his forehead. He said Lena had stopped eating after Daniel died. She couldn’t sleep alone.

At first, he had only brought her meals, fixed things around her house, and helped her manage the bills.

Then she hugged him, and he didn’t pull away.

“I never planned to leave you.” He looked up as if that should make it better. “I love you. Lena depends on me. I can’t just disappear from her life.”

“Did you go to her the night I miscarried?”

His mouth tightened.

“She was falling apart that night. I was hurting too, Nora. Lena didn’t know we’d lost the baby. When I was with her, I could stop thinking about it for a while.”

I looked at the entry on the screen.

I had believed we were grieving together.

All along, he had been using that grief to get closer to her.

“We’re both pregnant now,” I said. “When the babies are born, whose side are you planning to stand on?”

His phone lit up before he could answer.

Lena’s name appeared on the screen.

Evan grabbed his coat.

“She can’t be alone tonight.”

Then he walked out and closed the door behind him.