Chapter 2

It was almost midnight when Nathan finally came home.

I was waiting for him in the living room, the report from my twelfth failed embryo transfer lying on the coffee table. He was still wearing the same gray cashmere coat I had seen at the hospital that afternoon, looking as if he had really just returned from meeting a client in New Jersey.

"Why are you still awake?"

He leaned down to kiss me, but I turned my face away and simply told him I had gotten the results.

"It failed again."

Nathan went quiet for a few seconds. Then he sat beside me and took my hand.

"Evelyn, it's okay. We still have another chance."

I looked at him and suddenly found those words unbearably cruel.

Just hours ago, those same hands had held Lily, tied her shoes, and touched her forehead. She had wrapped her arms around his neck and called him Daddy again and again.

Now he was sitting beside me, playing the devoted husband who had suffered through every failed attempt with me.

Nathan pulled me into his arms.

"Once you've recovered, we can try a different clinic. Maybe a different doctor. If you want, we can try again."

I lifted my head from his chest.

"A thirteenth time?"

"As long as there's still hope, why wouldn't we?"

He said it so easily.

As if he had been the one taking injections, swallowing pills, undergoing tests and treatments for the past seven years.

As if he had been the one sitting in a doctor's office today, hearing that it had failed yet again.

But I didn't argue.

Instead, I asked:

"Do you really still want a child?"

Nathan barely hesitated.

"Of course. I've always wanted a child of our own."

I stared at him for a long moment.

If I hadn't seen another child curled up in his arms just hours earlier, those words might have given me hope again, just as they had so many times before.

Now, all I felt was cold.

He was already a father, yet he could still watch me walk into fertility clinics again and again and tell me the same thing.

Try one more time.

"I'm tired," I said.

Nathan noticed nothing unusual. He stroked my hair, told me to get some rest, and went to take a shower.

A few minutes after the water started running, his phone lit up on the coffee table.

I hadn't meant to look, but Claire's name appeared right on the lock screen.

"Lily finally fell asleep. She kept asking why Daddy couldn't stay tonight."

I stared at the message for a few seconds, then looked away.

So Nathan had stayed at their home before.

More than once.

By the time he came out of the bathroom, I had already put my medical report away in a drawer. Nathan glanced at me and suspected nothing.

That night, he fell asleep beside me quickly.

I didn't.

For the first time, I found myself thinking about all his business trips, late nights, and last-minute meetings over the years.

I had never checked his schedule because I trusted him.

I wasn't going to sit there guessing now, either.

I wanted facts.

A little after one in the morning, I picked up my phone. I saved the photos I had taken at the hospital and the messages in which Nathan claimed he was meeting a client in New Jersey.

Then I opened my contacts and found a name I hadn't used in years.

Mara.

She used to be an investigative journalist. Now she worked as a private investigator.

I sent her a message.

"I need you to look into two people for me."

Her reply came quickly.

"Who?"

I turned my head.

Nathan was sleeping peacefully beside me, breathing steadily, exactly as he had on countless nights before.

I typed two names.

"Nathan Brooks."

"Claire."

Mara replied again.

"What do you want me to find out?"

I paused before typing my answer.

"Start from the day they first met."

I sent the message and turned off my phone.

I didn't wake Nathan.

I didn't ask why he had lied to me.

At this point, I didn't want to hear his answers anymore.

"I only wanted to know how many years he had been lying to me."