CHAPTER 2 — THE MORNING AFTER

POV: Yessica | Location: New York

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Seven days.

Seven days since the test, and she still hadn't told him.

She'd planned it a hundred different ways. The right moment, the right words, the right version of Lewis sitting across from her long enough to actually hear it. But the right moment kept not arriving — he came home after midnight or not at all, and she lay in the guest room with her hand on her stomach, waiting.

Tonight was their anniversary.

Three years. One thousand and ninety-five days.

She'd started at four o'clock. White tablecloth, his mother's china, candles already lit by six. Filet mignon from the French butcher he liked. His favourite Bordeaux breathing on the counter. The pregnancy test in a small silver box beside her plate.

At nine forty-seven, his key turned in the lock.

She'd been sitting in the dark for nearly four hours.

Lewis flipped on the light. Froze.

"What's all this?"

"Our anniversary," she said.

The silence that followed had a specific quality — she'd learned to read Lewis's silences the way you learned weather. This one was the silence of a man calculating backward through a calendar.

"Oh God." He set his briefcase down. "I completely forgot. I'm so sorry, I—"

"You forgot."

"The Singapore negotiations have been insane and Regina needed—"

"You forgot our anniversary, Lewis."

He loosened his tie. Looked at the cold food, the candles burned to stubs, her face.

"We can celebrate tomorrow," he said. "I'll take you to that French place you like—"

"I don't want tomorrow." Her voice was steady. Controlled. She'd had four hours to decide what she wanted to say. "I wanted today."

"Yessica, I said I'm sorry—"

"Do you know how long I've been sitting here?" She stood. "Since six. Three hours and forty-seven minutes. Waiting."

"I would have been here if you'd told me you were planning this—"

"I shouldn't have to tell you it's our anniversary." The words came out harder than she'd intended. "I shouldn't have to schedule an appointment to see my own husband."

Lewis exhaled — that sound. The specific exhale of a man bracing against something he'd already decided was unreasonable. She knew that exhale. It lived in her chest like a splinter.

"This isn't about the dinner," she said quietly.

"I know—"

"It's about the calendar. About three years of this." She picked up the silver box from the table. Held it. "I had something to tell you tonight. Something important."

He looked at the box. Then at her face.

"What is it?"

"It doesn't matter now."

"Yessica—"

"I'm going to bed." She walked past him. "Happy anniversary, Lewis."

---

She made it to the guest room before the tears came.

Sat on the edge of the bed and looked at the silver box in her hands. She'd wrapped it carefully that afternoon. Tissue paper inside. The test sitting on top of it like something sacred.

She'd imagined it differently. His face when he opened it. The way he'd look at her. Finally. Some version of finally.

Her phone buzzed.

Lewis: I'm sorry. Truly. Let me make it up to you.

She didn't respond.

Another one: Please don't be like this.

Like this. Like a wife who wanted to be remembered. Like a woman who'd spent four hours in the dark.

She turned her phone face-down.

The bedroom door opened.

Lewis stood there — jacket off, tie gone, the face of a man who'd decided to try again. "We need to talk about this," he said.

"There's nothing to talk about."

"You're being unreasonable—"

"Am I." Not a question. "Tell me what today's date is, Lewis."

Silence.

"You don't know," she said.

"I've been working sixteen-hour days—"

"For three years." She looked at him steadily. "Through every anniversary. Every birthday. Every dinner I made and every night I waited. Through me." She paused. "Through us."

"Yessica—"

"What is this?" She stood. "What are we doing? Because from where I'm standing it looks like a business arrangement. You get a wife for social functions. I get a ring and a penthouse and the privilege of being Mrs. Lewis Sterling."

"That's not what this is."

"No?" She walked to the closet. Pulled out a blanket, a pillow. "When's the last time you asked about my day? What I did? What I thought about something that had nothing to do with your schedule?"

He didn't answer.

"That's what I thought." She gathered the bedding. "I'll sleep in the guest room."

"Yessica, come on—"

"This isn't punishment." She stopped. Looked at him — the man she'd married, the man she'd believed in, the man who had looked at her at a gallery opening like she was the most interesting person in the room. She'd spent three years trying to get that man back. "This is space," she said. "For both of us."

She walked past him.

He didn't follow.

---

The guest room was smaller. No skyline view, no custom furniture.

It felt more honest than their bedroom ever had.

She set the silver box on the nightstand. Lay down without changing clothes.

Put her hand on her stomach.

Lewis texted at eleven forty-three: I want to fix this. Tell me how.

At midnight: Are you awake?

At twelve-thirty: I know I've been absent. I know that. I just need you to talk to me.

She read all three. Didn't answer any of them.

She was done translating her needs into a language he might respond to. Done making herself smaller so his absence was easier to excuse. Done planning perfect moments for a man who couldn't find thirty minutes for his own marriage.

But the baby was still real.

The silver box on the nightstand was still real.

And sometime after one AM, lying in the dark with her hand flat against her stomach, she heard it — Lewis's voice from down the hall, low and careful, on a call.

She wasn't trying to listen.

She heard it anyway.

"—I know. I know, Mother. But it's not that simple—"

A pause.

Then Catherine's voice, carrying through the wall with the precision of a woman who had never learned to lower herself:

"I've been saying for two years, Lewis. Some mistakes reveal themselves slowly. The question isn't whether you see it now. The question is what you're willing to do about it."