Chapter 1: Summer’s POV

Cy’s face lit up when I brought out the cake. He started bouncing in his chair.

The kids from his ABA group’s eyes were on the Lego figures set up in fighting poses on the top layer, like a flock of pigeons zeroing in on a discarded Twinkie. Little hands halted. Exclamations of “Cake!” and “blocks” were sprinkled in.

Joy. My son was pure joy.

Was it hard when he couldn’t find his voice? Sure. When he had a meltdown, and I had to regulate us both? Yes.

But his blue eyes sparkling with excitement, and the breakthrough moments when he mastered a sentence or used his spoon right, outweighed all of that. Even the sleepless nights when he couldn’t go down. Even planning his party by myself.

“Are you sure Mr. Whitmore can’t make it?” Naomi, little Vivian’s mom, asked.

I carefully slid the cake onto the table. “He said he has a meeting.” I glanced at the clock. Waiting any longer would push Cy’s bedtime too far.

“I don’t know how many birthdays Adrian’s father missed over the years. Of course, my son never complained.” My mother-in-law, Grace, couldn’t let a challenge to my husband’s image go. She sat at the end of the table, as far from her grandson as she could get.

I crouched by my son, gripping his hand and patting a little rhythm into it. Cy stopped bouncing. “Sing now?” he asked.

I nodded, and everyone started to sing off-key. We were almost to the last verse, when the tone that signaled the front door opening sounded.

Like a shot, Cy sprang off his chair, little feet slapping on the tile as he squealed, “Daddy!”

I ignored Grace’s look of disgust and followed my son to the door. I expected to find my husband picking our child up and spinning him around like always.

It was the best part of my day, watching Adrian’s cool demeanor melt into that of a loving father, seeing him adore the child we made together. They were a matching pair, dark curly hair and deep blue eyes.

Cy stopped halfway to the door. My son’s eyes were locked on the floor; his headlong rush to meet his father cut off. He turned and climbed me like a tree, burying his face in my shoulder and letting out a cry of distress.

I swayed back and forth, breathing deep so he could copy me.

My gaze landed on the door, where my husband was ushering in a woman in a designer dress holding a toddler. Odd. Cy usually liked other kids.

I didn’t recognize the woman, but maybe Grace invited her. The idea of my mother-in-law doing anything for Cy was alien to me. She’d barely spoken to him since he had been diagnosed. I couldn’t forgive that.

“Let’s go say hi to Daddy. I think he’s with some new friends.”

We walked up as Adrian told the woman, “The guestroom is upstairs. I’ll bring Cyan’s old crib out of the storage closet after I change.”

“Thank you so much,” The woman put her manicured hand on my husband’s arm, and something ugly twisted in my gut. “Really, you have no idea how grateful I am, Adrian.”

As she passed onto the stairs, I noted her eyes were red with tears. I immediately regretted my flash of jealousy.

“Is everything okay? Who is that?” I asked, and my husband finally noticed me.

“Her name is Sabrina Delton. The little girl is her daughter, Lily. I’ve known her for a long time.”

It’s an understatement. In the early days of our marriage, Grace talked constantly about Sabrina Delton. Her son’s first love. The one that got away. Her choice for a daughter-in-law, if it were up to her.

I let Cy down. He sat on the floor, counting the tiles while I tried to figure out what to say.

Adrian continued explaining on his own. Sabrina had divorced, and her daughter, Lily, had cancer. Her husband didn’t take the news well. “I’m giving them the guestroom, until she can get on her feet.”

“What about her parents?”

His storm-cloud eyebrows converged. “They’ve cut her off. They think she should go back to the bastard.”

That look. He was angry on her behalf. He’d never shown outrage like that for me. 

Adrian’s love was meted out in grudging portions. He only gave it to those he deemed worthwhile, his mother who had raised him, his company which sustained his lifestyle, his son who would inherit his company.

I was the lowest rung of the ladder. The woman he married to fulfill an obligation, signing his name to the marriage certificate while sniping at me not to cry.

No ceremony. No wedding dress. Certainly no affection.

The way he looked at her…Like she was a star shining light on him.

I put a leash on my outrage. “After the party, I’ll grab some sheets and towels for her.” Adrian wouldn’t respond to jealousy. So, I put on a smile and endured it.

Cy grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the dining room, where a gaggle of nosy parents were pretending not to watch us.

“Cake now, Mama.”

…

A week later, Lily played on the dining room floor amid a hoard of toys Grace had bought for her. My mother-in-law was especially fond of Sabrina’s daughter. She always wanted a granddaughter.

Sabrina and Grace watched from their customary spot at the table. Cy was at ABA till three, and Adrian was in his study.

I wished I was in the sunroom, working on the landscape I had neglected since our new guests came. Instead, I turned bacon while those two sipped the tea I served them and gossiped.

“Oh, Summer? Can you make Lily some of those blueberry pancakes she likes?” Sabrina asked.

Make them yourself. “Sure.”

“And don’t burn them! I swear I never met a woman so useless,” Grace said. She’d been worse than usual, more open with her criticism since Sabrina came. She was only ever complimentary to the woman, and she absolutely doted on her daughter.

My chest tightened as I remembered her insults: failure, defective woman, mother to a broken child.

“Forget that.” Adrian leaned on the counter, and for a moment I hoped against hope that he’d tell his ex and his mother that I’m not their servant. “I need to talk to you.”

I turned the stove off and followed him to the study.

That’s when he told me. All hope that he would stand up for me vanished as he said calmly, “I’m going to hold a wedding with Sabrina. Lily’s been asking to see her mother in a wedding dress. She doesn’t understand, but she wants it.”  

In the five years we’d been married, we had never had a wedding. He had never once thought about making it up to me.

“I hope you can understand.”

I couldn’t understand at all, but I knew I couldn’t stop it—because if it was something Adrian wanted, he would make it happen.

Seeing my silence, impatience entered his voice. “It’s just a wedding to cheer up a child.”

 “And how long is your fake marriage going to last? Until her daughter dies?” I said coldly.

Adrian’s face became a mask of distaste. “Summer.”

It was a warning.

I closed my eyes, recalling the past five years: endless humiliation, his neglect, my mother-in-law’s insults, the hardship of caring for our child—but I always tried to be a good wife and mother.

Enough.

I nodded and said, “I’ll agree to your wedding, on one condition, we get divorced first.”