Chapter Five: The Baby He Wanted Gone

Sophia arrived within the hour of me calling her, walked through the curtain still in her work clothes, sat down beside me and took my hand and did not say I told you so even though she had every right to.

Damien did not come back.

Not that afternoon. Not that evening. Sophia was the one who stayed while the doctor came back and went over everything again. She was the one who asked the questions I could not find. She collected the discharge folder and the supplements and tucked them into her bag like she had been sent there specifically to do that.

When it was time to leave she put her arm through mine and walked me out.

She came home with me. Straight to the guest room, no discussion about it. She found blankets in the wardrobe and made herself a spot on the floor and when I told her to take the bed she looked at me like I had said something ridiculous and lay down and closed her eyes. I got into the bed and I lay there listening to her breathing slow into sleep and I thought about the heartbeat I had seen on that screen. Small. Fast. Real. Something that had been growing in me before any of this started, before the birthday, before Vanessa walked through the front door, before all of it.

Sophia left the next morning. Long hug at the door. Call me for anything, she said. I said I would.

That night the house settled into its usual quiet, the television murmuring somewhere upstairs, and I sat on the edge of the guest bed and I picked up my phone.

I texted Damien.

I kept it short. I told him the doctor had confirmed the pregnancy. Eight weeks. I told him I thought he deserved to hear it from me properly. I pressed send and put the phone on the dresser face up and sat on the edge of the bed and waited.

Nine minutes later the read receipt came through.

I looked at it for a long time. That one small word underneath my message. Read. With the time beside it. He had picked up his phone, seen my name, opened it, and set it back down without a single word back to me.

I turned off the light. I lay in the dark. I breathed and I did not cry because I had decided somewhere between the hospital and this moment that I was finished crying in this house.

He did not reply that night. He did not reply the next day either.

Two days of silence. Two days of him not once asking how I was doing, not since he walked out of that hospital room and did not come back. Two days of passing each other in the hallway with nothing said, of him eating dinner with Vanessa in the dining room while I made something small for myself in the kitchen, of me taking my iron supplements every morning and going to bed every night with both hands flat on my stomach and the read receipt still sitting unanswered on my phone.

On the third morning his footsteps stopped outside the guest room door.

No knock. The handle turned and he walked in.

Composed. Pressed. The face I knew from his boardroom clips, already past deliberation, coming not to talk but to deliver. He closed the door and stood in the middle of the room and looked at me with the careful eyes of a man who had spent two days organising his words.

“We need to talk about the pregnancy,” he said.

I looked at him. “You left that hospital four days ago and you have not once asked how I am doing. Not a call. Not a text. Nothing.” I held his gaze. “Then I sent you a message telling you I was pregnant and you read it and still said nothing. You did not come. You just, nothing.” I shook my head slowly. “Two days of silence after that. And now you are here.”

Something moved across his face. “I needed time to think.”

“About whether to respond to your wife telling you she was pregnant. About whether to check if she was even okay after you left her in that hospital alone?.”

“About how to handle the situation properly.”

“And this is handling it properly,” I said. “Walking in here days later.”

He looked at me steadily. “I have thought about it and I need to be honest with you. We have not been close in some time. So before anything else I have to ask.” A pause. “Are we even sure it is mine.”

The room went very still.

I looked at him. At this man. At his composed, reasonable, carefully arranged face.

“Yes,” I said. “We are sure.”

He held my gaze for a moment, then nodded once, like a man filing information away. “Then you need to take care of it,” he said. “I cannot raise two children in one household. Vanessa is three months from her due date. There is already going to be a baby here and I am not in a position to manage two. It is not something I am willing to do.”

“I am not removing this baby, Damien.”

He looked at me like I had said something mildly irrational. “Amelia.”

“No.” My voice was quiet but it did not shake. “This is something I have wanted for five years. You know that. You have watched me want it. And you are standing here telling me to get rid of it because it is inconvenient for the life you have arranged around yourself.” I looked at him steadily. “No.”

Something moved behind his eyes. Not guilt. A man recalculating.

“You are not thinking about this practically,” he said.

“I am thinking about it more clearly than I have thought about anything in months.”

He was quiet for a moment. Then he straightened and smoothed the front of his jacket, the way he closed meetings. “I am not going to force you today,” he said. “I will give you two weeks. Think about what raising a child alone actually looks like. Think about the reality of your situation.” He held my gaze, calm and final. “The offer stands. When you are ready to be reasonable, you know where to find me.”

He said it like he was extending a deadline. Like he was being generous.

Then he opened the door and walked out.

I sat on the edge of the bed and I looked at the space where he had been standing and I breathed. In. Out. I thought about two weeks. I thought about the offer standing. I thought about him saying are we sure it is mine with that measured, detached voice, like he was querying a figure in a spreadsheet.

Then I pressed both hands flat against my stomach.

He had been in that hospital room and chosen a phone call.

He had read my message and chosen silence.

He had walked into this room and asked me first if the baby was even his and then told me to remove it.

Two weeks, he had said.

He could have two years.

My answer was not going to change.