005 - Where It All Began

SERA

I guess they didn't know I was still there.

My hands were still wrapped in white bandages from pulling glass out of my skin earlier. The cuts throbbed with each heartbeat, but the pain in my chest was far worse.

I sat in the back of my car in the hospital parking lot, watching Lucy walk Luna toward the main doors.

Luna looked so small in her pink dress, her little hand holding tight to Lucy's fingers. She didn't look back for me. Not even once.

I pressed my forehead against the cool window and closed my eyes. Maybe I should just drive home. Maybe I should just let them have their perfect little reunion without me there to ruin it.

But then I remembered.

"Her coat." The words came out as a whisper to my empty car.

Luna's favorite jacket was still on the seat next to me—the purple one with stars that she insisted on wearing everywhere. The evening air was getting cold, and she'd freeze without it.

Even if she hated me, even if she wanted Vivienne to be her mother instead, I couldn't let my daughter get sick.

My legs felt shaky as I got out of the car. The elevator ride up from the parking garage felt like it took forever. Each floor that passed made my stomach twist tighter.

I was about to call Lucy when I heard voices around the corner.

I stopped walking. Something made me step behind a tall white pillar, my heart hammering so loud I was sure everyone could hear it.

"Dad, when will you marry Vivienne?" Luna's innocent voice cut sharp, through my entirety like a knife.

I had to grab the pillar to keep from falling down. My knees went weak and my vision got blurry for a second.

I knew I should have turned back there and then, I knew I shouldn't have stood to listen but yet…my feet wouldn't budge.

"Honey, your dad and I can't get married unless your parents get divorced first." Vivienne's voice was sweet like candy, but I heard the poison underneath.

The message was clear. She wanted Darius to leave me.

Darius knew what she meant too. I could tell by the way he got quiet.

This was Vivienne's plan all along. She came back from New York thinking Darius would be waiting for her with open arms. She thought he'd still love her the same way he did before she left to become famous.

She just didn't expect him to have a wife and child.

Luna's little forehead wrinkled up like she was thinking hard. "Dad, can you divorce Mom?"

Everything inside me broke apart.

My whole body started shaking so hard my teeth clicked together. Cold spread through my bones like ice water. Maybe Luna didn't understand what divorce meant—she was only four years old—but her words still tore my heart in half.

I thought Luna was the one person in the world who belonged to me. She meant everything to me. More than Darius, more than my own life.

The blood connection between a mother and child could never be broken or taken away. That's what I used to believe. But standing there listening to my daughter ask her father to get rid of me, I knew I was wrong.

So wrong.

"Even if Mom and Dad get divorced and Vivienne takes care of you, you still can't eat ice cream and cookies for every meal." Darius pinched Luna's little nose, his voice gentle and playful.

"You're mean, Dad!" Luna's face scrunched up like a baby squirrel.

Her cute expression made them all laugh together. Their happy voices echoed off the hospital walls while I stood hidden behind cold concrete, feeling like I was dying inside.

I couldn't listen anymore.

My feet moved on their own. I stepped out from behind the pillar and walked toward them, Luna's jacket clutched in my bandaged hands.

The second they saw me, everything changed. Their laughter died like someone had turned off a radio. Smiles froze on their faces like they'd been caught doing something bad.

Which they had.

I held out Luna's coat to Darius without saying a word. My voice was somewhere deep inside my throat, trapped behind all the hurt and anger and fear.

I looked straight into his eyes. No tears this time. No begging or fighting. Just empty space where my heart used to be.

I used to dread not finding warmth in those green eyes, even though I knew he didn't love me, I always wished for him to hate me less, for him to…care for me as much as I did for him.

But now, I couldn't bring myself to want it anymore. I waited until he took the coat from me, making sure our fingers didn't touch.

Then I walked away from them.

I walked away from my husband and my daughter and the woman who was stealing my life piece by piece and I didn't look back, not once.

When I got home, the house was quiet and dark. All the guests had left. The piano was closed. Empty glasses sat on tables like ghosts of the party that was supposed to be for me.

I climbed the stairs to my bedroom—the room that was only mine because Darius and I never shared a room.

I got pregnant only because we both accidentally got drunk and lost our inhibitions that night.

He claimed the only reason we didn't share a room was because he didn't want to wake me when he came to bed late from work. But I knew the real reason.

He couldn't stand being that close to me anymore.

I pulled my biggest suitcase out of the closet and opened it on the bed. My hands shook as I started folding clothes and putting them inside. Dresses, shoes, pictures of Luna when she was a baby.

I wasn't running away. I was going back to who I used to be five years ago.

Before Darius. Before marriage. Before I learned what it felt like to have your heart broken by the two people you loved most in the world.

If I divorced Darius now, he would probably get to keep Luna. Men with money and powerful families usually won in court, especially when the wife looked crazy and jealous. Especially when there was a sweet, dying woman ready to be the perfect stepmother.

Vivienne would get everything she wanted. My husband, my daughter, my life.

But she didn't really love Luna. I could see it in the way she looked at my daughter—like Luna was useful for getting what she wanted, not like she was a precious little person who needed love and protection.

I wouldn't let that happen. I wouldn't let that woman raise my child.

If Vivienne wanted a fight, I'd give her one.

I zipped up the suitcase and pulled it off the bed. It hit the floor with a heavy thud that seemed too loud in the quiet house.

At my computer, I found the earliest flight to New York. My fingers trembled as I typed in my credit card number.

Click.

Purchase complete.

The flight left in six hours.

I sat on the edge of my bed and stared at my reflection in the dark window. The woman looking back at me had bandaged hands and tired eyes, but something else too.

Determination.

For four years, I'd been the perfect wife. The quiet, obedient woman who never caused trouble. Who let her husband's ex-girlfriend waltz back into their lives and charm everyone while I stood in the corner like furniture.

No more.

I grabbed my purse and my suitcase and walked out of the house that had never really felt like home anyway.

The taxi ride to the airport felt like a dream. Street lights blurred past the window while I practiced what I would say when I got to New York.

I knew exactly where I was going. The address was burned into my memory from five years ago, when everything started falling apart.

The plane was mostly empty. I sat by the window and watched the city get smaller and smaller below me until it disappeared into darkness.

Hours later, I stood outside a familiar door in Manhattan. My heart pounded as I raised my hand to knock.

This was where it all began. Maybe this was where it would end too.

I knocked three times and waited.

The door opened, and there he was. Johnson.

"Sera? God, I've missed you so much. Did you finally remember you have an old friend who's been waiting for you?"