Chapter 4

VIVIAN'S POV

"I'm going back to work," I said, before he could ask twice. "My old clothes weren't professional enough, so I cleared them out. You're not going to begrudge me a new wardrobe, are you?"

His shoulders came down half an inch. "Buy whatever you want. Exchange anything you don't like."

I'd never spent much of what he gave me, old habit, or maybe just never wanting to owe him more than I already did. This was the first time I'd thrown so much away at once, and I could see him filing it under ‘she'll regret it later and be more careful’. Let him think that. I went back to my desk, picked up where I'd left off in Whitmore's notes, and didn't look up again.

I used to fling myself at him every time he came home from a trip. Hang off him, talk his ear off, drag him to bed before he'd even set his bag down.

Now I couldn't make myself look interested even if I tried. I watched something shift in his face when he noticed it. A flicker of the exact hunger he used to wear when I was nineteen and still pretending not to like him. He came around the desk and reached for me.

I stiffened before I could stop it. Everything about him used to make me want to get closer. Now his cologne alone turned my stomach.

"I want to buy a car," I said, stepping out of his reach. "For work."

"Whatever you want." He leaned in anyway.

I pressed two fingers to his mouth before it landed. "I'm still getting over this cold. I just took medicine, I'm about to fall asleep on my feet. I don't want to get you sick before a big week."

I watched him think it through — sick, then Chloe, then the baby — and back off, satisfied with his own logic. "Get some rest." He kissed my hair instead and left the room.

I followed at a distance and stopped outside Chloe's door. It hadn't quite latched.

"Did you give Vivi her pill?" Chloe's voice, muffled. "If she's not asleep we have to be careful, or she'll catch us."

"She's on cold medicine. She'll be out on her own tonight."

The last word was barely out of his mouth before she launched herself at him and they were kissing. Lips, teeth. The sounds of fabric and rustling. I already had my phone up and recording before I fully understood what I was recording.

Her pill.

Back in my room, I sat very still before opening the cabinet where I kept my vitamin C, the ones he brought me every night with a glass of water and a kiss on the forehead, like the world's most devoted husband. I dissolved one in warm water and added a drop of iodine from the first aid kit. If it were really vitamin C, the color would fade almost instantly. I'd run this exact reaction a hundred times in undergrad.

The water stayed brown.

My brows furrowed as understanding dawned on me. The headaches. The fog some mornings that made it hard to string a sentence together. The heaviness I'd blamed on grief — every failed cycle, every appointment, every hope that came to nothing. I'd told myself it was my body breaking down from wanting a baby so badly.

It wasn't my body. It was him, one dissolved pill at a time.

I put my hand over my stomach, grateful — genuinely, sickly grateful — that he'd been away long enough these past weeks that I hadn't taken a single one since I might have been pregnant. If this had happened three weeks ago instead…

I didn't let myself finish the thought.

I was reaching for my phone to book the procedure when it rang. Grandma.

I hadn't visited in months. My father died when I was small, and my mother remarried into a whole new life I was never really part of, so it was my grandparents who actually raised me. Grandpa's hands over mine at the counter before I was tall enough to reach it without a stool. He'd been gone since my second year of college. Aunt Dana had moved Grandma in with her here in Ashford not long after, and I'd told myself every week I'd go see them soon, and every week I hadn't.

"Darling, tomorrow's your aunt's birthday. Come by, if you and Natey are free."

I didn't want anything to do with Nathaniel. But I wanted her voice more than I wanted to stay angry, so I said yes.

~~~

In the morning they were already dressed and waiting at the table, breakfast laid out like a magazine spread, rolled omelets, rice balls, a soup that actually smelled homemade.

"Feeling better?" Nathaniel asked, too pleased with himself.

I made a noncommittal sound and sat across from him.

"Nathan did all this himself," Chloe said, glowing. "Up before sunrise. Vivi, you're so lucky."

I looked at the spread for a moment. He used to burn instant noodles. "When did you learn to cook like this?"

He cleared his throat. "Mostly prepped. Eat before it gets cold."

I drank the soup and set the spoon down. "I'm going to my aunt's tonight. Grandma asked."

"I haven't seen them in a while myself." There he went. Already deciding for both of us. "I'll come."

Behind him, Chloe brightened, generous now that she'd have the house to herself. "I'll stay and tidy up."

"Don't bother," he told her. "Watch TV, order in if you're hungry. Have Blake bring you lunch."

She promised to behave and waved us off like a wife seeing her husband off to work, and I got in the car before he could open my door for me. I couldn't stand one more small kindness from him today.

There was a leather notebook wedged into the side pocket of the passenger seat. It was not mine.

I picked it up.