CHAPTER 1 The Dying Wish

(Sabrina’s POV)

“Congratulations, Mrs. Cooper. You’re one month pregnant.”

My fingertips landed on my stomach before I told them to. The doctor kept talking, but I was already three streets ahead. Already pricing the crib. Already picking the name.

Pregnant.

For three years I had been Nate Cooper’s wife in name only. One night, a month ago, on our anniversary, he had come home drunk and reeking of someone else’s perfume and whispered another woman’s name into my hair until the sun came up.

The next morning he left me a note on the kitchen counter.

Sorry. It was a mistake. Don’t read into it.

I had ironed his shirts that day anyway.

I drove home with the receipt for prenatal vitamins folded against my wedding ring. I stopped at the market.

Salmon, because Nate pretended not to like it but always finished his plate. Lemons. The cabernet from our wedding night. A small white candle, because three years ago I had promised myself I would light one on our first real anniversary—and tonight, a month late, I was going to pretend the date and tell him.

Maybe a baby would change things. Maybe he would look at me, just once, the way he looked at her.

Tonight, I was going to tell him.

His black limousine was already in the driveway.

The grocery bag thumped against my knee. Nate never came home before nine. Not for our anniversary. Not for his grandmother’s birthday. Not for the surgery I had two summers ago, when I’d taken a cab home from the hospital alone with stitches.

But here he was. At six. Early.

I broke into a half-run up the front steps.

“Nate? You’re—”

“Sit down, Sabrina.”

His voice could have iced the wine through the bag. He was already sitting at the dining table. Jacket off. Tie loose. He didn’t look up.

I sat. The pregnancy test was hidden in my purse on my lap. I held it tight.

“I need to talk to you,” he said. “About something serious.”

“Okay.” I made my voice softer. Wifelier. “I have something to tell you, too—”

“Alexis is dying.”

The grocery bag slid off my knee and hit the floor.

Alexis. Alexis Atwood.

The woman whose name he’d whispered for three years. The woman whose photograph he kept in his wallet behind a hotel receipt, like he thought I’d never looked.

“What?”

“She’s sick. Terminally. The doctors give her a year. Maybe less.”

He looked up at me finally. His eyes were red and wet. My husband, who had not cried at his own father’s funeral, was crying for another woman!

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “Nate, I—”

“She wants a child.”

I went still. “What did you say?”

“She wants a child before she dies, Sabrina. It’s her last wish. She wants a baby.”

“A baby?”

“My baby.”

My fingers closed around the pregnancy test through the leather of my purse. I felt the edges cut into my palm.

“Your…baby.”

“Through IVF. A clinic. There would be no affair. Nothing physical. Just a procedure. Sabrina, please. She is dying. I have known her since we were sixteen. I cannot let her die without—”

“STOP.”

I shocked us both. In three years I had never raised my voice in this house. Nate actually flinched.

“You are asking me,” I said, “your wife, to let you have a baby with another woman!”

“I’m asking you to be kind.”

“Kind?” I laughed. “You want me to be kind? DO YOU HEAR YOURSELF?”

“You will be compensated. Generously. You and I both know our marriage was never—”

“Don’t.” My voice was shaking. “Don’t you dare finish that sentence, Nate Cooper!”

“You knew what this was, Sabrina. You knew from the day we signed the papers. I married you to make my grandmother happy. You married me to pay for your uncle’s hospital bills. Don’t sit there now and act like I broke something we both knew was already broken!”

Every word landed like a slap. Three years of ironed shirts. Three years of memorizing his coffee order. Three years of telling Aunt Nancy on the phone, he loves me in his own way.

He had been counting the days. I had been hemming his trousers.

He stood up and walked around the table. For one stupid, hopeful second, I thought he was going to touch me.

He didn’t.

He poured himself a whisky.

“Think about it,” he said. “That’s all I ask. Sleep on it.”

“My answer is no.”

“Sabrina—”

“NO.”

He sighed like I was the one being unreasonable. He took his drink and walked toward the stairs. At the bottom step he paused and spoke without turning.

“You know what your problem is, Sabrina? You don’t know your place.”

And then he was gone.

I sat at the table for a long time. The salmon went cold in the bag. The wine sat in the bottle, unopened.

Then I stood up. I had to do something with my hands.

My heel caught on something on the floor. I bent down to pick it up, a courier envelope that had been kicked half under the cabinet. I almost threw it away.

Until I saw the return address.

Crestwood Fertility Clinic.

My fingers went numb.

I tore it open. Three pages. A billing summary in Nate’s name. Six figures. An appointment schedule, going back two months. The third Friday of every month. Including the eighteenth.

The eighteenth.

That was our anniversary.

Now I knew where my husband had been the night he came home drunk and whispered her name into my hair. He had been at Crestwood. He had been holding Alexis’s hand while I was at home heating his dinner for the fourth time.

The third page was an ultrasound. The date was stamped along the bottom.

Six weeks ago.

I sank to the kitchen floor with the picture trembling between my fingers.

Alexis Atwood was already pregnant.

My husband had not been asking my permission tonight. He had been waiting for me to find the envelope.

I left the salmon. I left the wine. I left my purse on the floor where it had fallen.

I went up the stairs two at a time.

I pushed open the study door without knocking.