Chapter 1

At seven weeks pregnant, I discovered that my husband already had another child.

Twenty minutes earlier, I had been listening to our baby’s heartbeat for the first time.

“Seven weeks,” the doctor said, turning the monitor toward me. “Everything looks exactly where it should be.”

Then she turned up the sound.

My baby’s heartbeat filled the examination room, fast and steady.

I stared at the screen and covered my mouth.

For almost two years, Harrison and I had been trying to have a baby.

I had taken medication that made me sick, tracked every cycle, gone through treatment after treatment, and cried over more negative tests than I wanted to remember.

Every month, Harrison told me the same thing.

“We’ll keep trying.”

And now we had finally made it.

There was a baby inside me.

Our baby.

The doctor printed the ultrasound photograph and handed it to me.

I held it with both hands.

Harrison should have been sitting beside me.

He had promised to come, but less than an hour earlier, he texted that an emergency meeting had been added to his schedule.

I’m sorry, Rosie. Tell me everything afterward. I’ll make it up to you tonight.

He still did not know I was pregnant.

I had wanted to be certain before telling him.

Now I imagined going home, placing the ultrasound in his hand, and watching his face when I finally said the words I had waited almost two years to say.

You’re going to be a father.

I was still thinking about that moment when I passed the maternity wing on my way to the elevators.

A newborn was sleeping in the nearest bassinet.

I glanced at the identification card.

Then I stopped.

Mother: Sabrina Hale.

My cousin.

For a second, I forgot how to breathe.

Sabrina had never told me she was pregnant.

Then my eyes moved to the next line.

Father: Harrison Cole.

I stared at the name.

My husband’s name.

No.

There had to be another Harrison Cole.

There had to be some mistake.

I looked down at the ultrasound photograph in my hand.

Seven weeks.

After two years, I was finally carrying Harrison’s child.

And three feet away from me was a newborn whose hospital record said Harrison was already his father.

My hands started shaking.

I walked to Sabrina’s room because I still needed the name on that card to be wrong.

The door was partly open.

Sabrina was asleep in the bed.

A newborn boy lay beside her.

White roses covered the windowsill.

Harrison sent me white roses every anniversary.

For eight years, I had thought they belonged to us.

My phone lit up.

A message from Harrison.

Meeting is running late. Still at the office. Miss you.

I read it twice.

Then I heard footsteps behind me.

I turned.

Harrison was walking down the maternity hallway.

He carried a blue baby blanket in one hand and another bouquet of white roses in the other.

He never saw me.

Harrison walked toward Sabrina’s room.

For eight years, those flowers had meant anniversaries, apologies, and home.

Now he was carrying them to my cousin.

I stayed where I was and watched him step through her door.

My hand was shaking when I lifted my phone.

I took one photograph.

Harrison beside Sabrina’s hospital room.

White roses in his hand.

The blue blanket folded over his arm.

Then I looked down at the ultrasound photograph I was still holding.

That morning, I had planned to tell my husband he was going to be a father.

Instead, I had just taken a photograph proving he already was.