Chapter 3: There Will Be No More Children

Eleanor stayed in the hospital a full month, and every night she dreamed.

In the dream, Julian came to see her, sat by her bedside day and night, smiled as he listened for the sound of the baby inside her.

Every time she woke, she was already crying.

A child.

That was all she wanted.

Julian never once visited.

He said he was on a business trip, London, this time, but he did send his assistant, David Shaw, to deliver flowers twice. Pink roses, both times. He also covered her medical bills.

More than once Eleanor almost handed the flowers off to a nurse. She never quite managed to say the words out loud, choosing instead to sneeze her way through every visit.

She'd only been two months along, and the procedure itself hadn't hurt much physically. But touching her stomach had become a habit she couldn't break.

The thought of the small life that had briefly existed there was enough to bring her to tears every time.

Her first child.

Hers and the man she'd loved for ten years.

And now, gone.

She cried through her nights, and her recovery lagged. But the hospital needed the bed for new patients, and eventually she had no choice but to pack up and leave.

She was folding clothes into a bag in the empty room when a stranger walked in.

Delicate features. Flawless makeup. A Barbie-pink halter bodycon dress, and around her neck, a necklace that caught every bit of light in the room.

Eleanor recognized it instantly, the same globally limited Fenwick & York pink diamond necklace Tyler had posted about.

"Hi. I'm Cassandra Vance. Julian's high school classmate."

She offered her name first, and Eleanor turned it over in her head.

Cassandra Quinn Vance.

CQV.

There it was. No escaping it.

Cassandra extended a hand. Eleanor shook it politely.

"Eleanor Hale. Julian's wife. You can call me Mrs. Cross."

Cassandra's smile flickered, just barely, before smoothing back into place. She'd clearly had practice.

"I came to apologize to you."

She lowered her eyes, and the picture of remorse she painted was, admittedly, convincing.

"I had no idea you'd gone to the hospital that day because you were pregnant. If I'd known, I never would have let Julian escort me to the Fenwick launch. And that night, I was drunk. It's really Tyler's fault for calling him in the first place. I never expected Julian to actually come get me... and because of that, you lost the baby. It's my fault. All of it."

She held out a fruit basket, her expression practically glowing with guilt.

"Please. You have to take this, or I'll never forgive myself."

Eleanor almost laughed at the performance. "Why wouldn't I take a fifty-dollar fruit basket? It's not like you're handing over that necklace as an apology."

Cassandra flushed, cleared her throat. "I heard you're being discharged today?"

"That's right."

"You might want to consider staying a little longer. Seeing you is going to remind Julian of the baby he couldn't save, it'll only upset him more. He's been miserable this whole time you've been in here, and I've been trying to keep his spirits up. We went away for a bit, yacht, deep-sea fishing, watched the sunrise and sunset together..."

Eleanor watched Cassandra's face go soft and dreamy and decided it didn't matter whether a word of it was true.

"Well, my husband's a good man. Loyal to his friends. Always looks after his old classmates. Takes them out on the yacht every week, actually, he even gave my best friend a ten-million-dollar diamond necklace once."

Eleanor didn't usually lie. But needling a scheming homewrecker felt like an acceptable exception tonight.

Cassandra's hand curled into a fist. "Well, if you're that generous about it, I feel better."

She turned to go, then paused at the door, glancing back. "By the way, Julian couldn't come pick you up because he's exhausted. He's sleeping it off at my place right now."

And then she was gone.

Eleanor felt herself deflate, but strangely, no anger came. Just confusion.

She texted David and learned Julian was at the office. Right now.

Which meant Cassandra had lied.

Eleanor didn't trust a word out of that woman's mouth, she wanted to hear it from Julian himself.

Before leaving the hospital, she stopped by the herbal pharmacy on her way out.

Julian had a chronic stomach condition, and his mother distrusted Western medicine, so he'd always been on an herbal regimen, one Eleanor brewed herself, from memory, down to the exact dosage and steep time for every ingredient.

The supply at home was nearly gone. If it hadn't been for everything else going on, she'd have restocked weeks ago.

She carried the bag straight to Cross Group headquarters.

The receptionist recognized her, she'd delivered meals to Julian's office before, though the woman had always assumed she was hired help.

"Ms. Hale, Mr. Cross is in a meeting right now. You can leave the medicine with his assistant, David's in his office."

"Sure."

Eleanor didn't bother correcting her, that it wasn't "Ms. Hale" but "Mrs. Cross."

She took the elevator to the top floor. But instead of finding David, she found herself outside the general manager's office.

The frosted glass door hadn't quite latched. Through the gap, she could see Julian and Tyler standing inside.

"Look, Brother Cross, you keep saying you can't let your wife go, but you had it in you to kill your own kid without blinking."

Eleanor froze mid-step, hand halfway raised to knock.

"That has nothing to do with Cassandra."

"Whether she's back in the country or not, I'm never having a child with Eleanor."

"Why not?"

"People only have so much bandwidth. She'll change once there's a kid. Right now my grandfather likes her, my mother approves of her, fine. Add a baby and everything gets complicated." Julian took an unhurried drag from his cigarette, and the easy curve of his smile, the one Eleanor had always found so charming, made her furious for the first time in her life.

"Besides, I knew she was pregnant. That's exactly why I was rough with her that night. Damaged her uterus on purpose. Doctor says she'll never carry another child."

His voice stayed level the whole time. Almost bored. Like he was describing something that had happened to a stranger.

On the other side of the door, Eleanor went cold with sweat.

"Man, if you're that brutal to the old hag, who's supposed to carry on the family name? Gonna have to be Cassandra, then."

Julian didn't confirm it. Didn't deny it either.

As he finished the cigarette and wrapped up the conversation, he noticed something Tyler hadn't.

A bag of herbal medicine, sitting just outside the door.

Magnolia Gardens Nursing Home.

Eleanor fled there without thinking, without a plan.

She'd been standing outside her own husband's office, inside his own company, and she simply couldn't stand there one more second.

She felt sick.

Every single word out of Julian's mouth had turned her stomach, made her want to retch right there in the hallway.

This was the man she'd loved for ten years.

He'd pursued her, married her, all to get back at another woman.

And now he was killing their child with his own two hands, for that same woman.

Ten years of love. Three years of marriage. All of it a joke.

Eleanor scrubbed the tears off her face and walked into the nursing home.

Her mother had been moved here not long after the wedding. Already frail, and then a pandemic had tipped her into early Alzheimer's.

Even though her mother no longer recognized her, there were things Eleanor still needed to say.

Her mother's one wish in life had been to see her happily married.

So Eleanor wanted to tell her

I'm a terrible daughter.

By evening, she'd left the nursing home and gone straight to a law office nearby.

Dusk settled over the city. The lights came on. Traffic thickened along the avenues.

When Julian got home that night, the apartment was dark.

He flipped the light on, and found the herbal medicine sitting there, along with a fresh bunch of pink roses in his hand.

The big, empty house held no warm dinner waiting for him.

No Eleanor, either.