Chapter 3

Nora's POV

The next morning, after Arthur left for the office, my phone lit up with a direct message on Instagram.

The profile picture belonged to Chloe. She must have noticed me standing on the sidewalk yesterday.

"Hi Nora. I know reaching out might hurt you. Arthur has always worried about your health, and he was terrified that any shock would hurt you again, which is why he never wanted to leave you. Leo's arrival was an accident, but the child is innocent. I just hope we can eventually find a way where no one has to suffer anymore."

I read the paragraph twice.

She didn't apologize. She just gently reminded me that Arthur had been "taking care" of me. She made it sound as though my marriage wasn't a marriage at all, but a prolonged act of charity that he was too kind to end.

I didn't reply. A new email had just arrived from the investigator.

"The child's identity and date of birth have been confirmed. The authenticity and timestamp of the attached photograph have also been verified."

I opened the encrypted PDF. The first few pages were summaries of property links and financial transfers.

The final page was an old hospital photograph. Mr. Vance didn't explain where he found it, only noting below it that the original file and timestamp had been verified.

Chloe was in a hospital bed, holding a newborn. Arthur sat beside her in scrubs. His left hand was reaching out, letting the baby grip his index finger.

Right there, on his ring finger, was his wedding band.

I looked at the digital timestamp printed at the bottom of the photo.

October 14, 2021. 10:17 AM.

The silence in the empty house suddenly felt deafening.

I pulled out my phone and scrolled back through my cloud backups to my old call logs. There it was. Between 9:30 AM and 11:00 AM on October 14, I had dialed Arthur's number twenty-two times. His assistant had told me he was in a "critical lockdown meeting."

I didn't know if he knew I was losing our baby at that exact moment. But I knew that in the two hours I needed him most, he had chosen to make himself completely unreachable.

When Arthur finally rushed into my hospital room later that afternoon, he had fallen to his knees by my bed, sobbing uncontrollably. Those weren't tears of grief. They were tears of sickening, suffocating guilt.

I didn't cry. The sadness was still there, but it had retreated to somewhere very far away. Taking its place was a cold, near-brutal clarity.

I saved three copies of the report to a secure cloud drive. The documents might not all be admissible in court, but they were more than enough to show my lawyer exactly where to start looking.

Only then did I walk into the closet and pack a single suitcase.

I walked down to the kitchen island. I printed the hospital photo and laid it flat on the marble counter. I slid my diamond wedding ring off my finger and placed it directly over the timestamp.

Finally, I took out the velvet box containing his anniversary gift. I placed it next to the photo, leaving the lid open. Inside rested the custom silver watch. On the back of the dial was the phrase I had carefully chosen months ago:

Thank you for always being there.

I didn't leave a note. I walked out the front door and locked it behind me.

At six-thirty, he would come home. This time, it was his turn to face an empty house.