Pregnant and Rejected, Now She’s Back!

My hands wouldn’t stop shaking as I clutched the test results against my chest. Three years of trying, of hoping, of praying every single month only to be disappointed.But not this time. This time, the test was positive. I was pregnant with Darius’s child.A smile broke across my face despite the tears blurring my vision. This was what would finally fix us, what would make him look at me the way he used to, back before everything fell apart. Before Cassia.I pushed the thought away. Cassia was dead, and now I was carrying Darius’s baby. This would change everything.I practically ran up the front steps, my heart pounding. I couldn’t wait to see his face when I told him, couldn’t wait to watch the shock turn to joy.The front door was unlocked. I pushed it open, calling out. “Darius? I’m home! I have something to tell you—”The words died in my throat. Our bedroom door was open and through it, I could see him with a woman in his arms.His face was buried in her hair, his arms wrapped

He sat on a white couch, looking relaxed and handsome in a tailored suit. And beside him, holding his hand—Cassia.“—so grateful to have her back,” Darius was saying, smiling at her with such warmth it made my chest ache. “I thought I’d lost her forever.”“And what about your wife?” the interviewer asked. “Brynn Haverton?”The smile dropped from Darius’s face.“That,” he said coldly, “will be handled soon.”The café felt too small, too bright and too loud. Everyone was staring at the television now, at Darius and Cassia, the perfect couple, sitting on that white couch like they belonged together, like they’d always belonged together.The interviewer leaned forward, her expression sympathetic. “I can imagine this is a complicated situation. Your wife—Brynn—she must be devastated.”Darius’s jaw tightened. “Brynn and I, our marriage was a mistake from the beginning.”A mistake.“How so?” the interviewer pressed.Darius glanced at Cassia. She gave him the smallest nod, her expression enc

“You heard me.” Her eyes were ice. “Apologize to her now.”“For what?” I looked at Cassia. She stood between my parents with her head down, looking small and fragile, the perfect victim. “For asking why she’s in your house? For asking why she’s—”“For everything,” my father cut in, his voice dripping with disgust. “For trying to kill her, for stealing her life, for—”“I didn’t try to kill her!” The scream tore out of me. “I’ve been telling you this for three years! I didn’t push her! She fell! It was an accident!”“Liar,” my mother hissed.“I’m not lying!” Desperation clawed at my throat. “I have evidence! The investigator found proof! If you’d just listen—”“We don’t want to hear your excuses.” My father’s expression was stone. “We’ve heard enough lies.”I looked at Cassia, begged her with my eyes to tell the truth.But she just stood there with tears streaming down her perfect face, playing her part.“Please,” I whispered. “Please just listen to me. Cassia is lying, she’s been lying

Seth opened the door before I finished knocking.He took one look at me standing on his doorstep with my bag and my ruined mascara and the particular expression of someone who has just walked out of a war they'd been losing for three years, and he stepped aside without a word. No questions, no careful arrangement of his face into something sympathetic, no performance of concern. That was the thing about Seth that I had always taken for granted and only now understood was rare. He had never once in fifteen years asked me to explain myself before he let me in.I made it as far as his kitchen. I set my bag on the table and stood there with both hands flat against the surface and my eyes fixed on the grain of the wood and tried very hard to hold onto the steadiness I had maintained for the past forty minutes. The drive over. The dark streets. The way I had kept my breathing even and my hands on the wheel and not let myself think about any of it until I was somewhere safe.I didn't manage

Julie wasn't a match.Dr. Hana told me on a Tuesday morning, gently and carefully, the way she did everything, and I sat across from her and nodded and said the right things and drove home and sat in the parking garage for twenty minutes before I trusted myself to go upstairs.Julie wasn't a match, which meant we were going to the registry, which meant time, and time was the one thing Jake didn't have in abundance.I gave myself those twenty minutes in the parking garage, and then I went upstairs and made lunch and helped Jake build a train track across the living room floor and read them both a story at bedtime, and after they were asleep I sat at the kitchen table with my laptop and started learning everything there was to know about bone marrow registries.I became very good at it very quickly, because I had always been good at learning things I needed to know.The weeks that followed had a particular shape to them.On the surface, nothing changed. I went to set, I took meetings, I