Too Late, I'm Done Crying

Isolde Laurent Pov I never thought this day would come. Not once in five years did I let myself picture it, and yet here I was, standing in my kitchen with a pregnancy test in my hand.Two lines. Dark and clear. I had already taken three that morning and one more after lunch, and the doctor's letter was folded in my handbag under a pack of tissues. Five years of nothing. Five years of his mother's eyes dropping to my flat stomach every time she visited. Five years of me smiling through it. And now I finally had what Saffron Cole wanted.I cooked all his favorites. Braised beef, garlic rice, the soup his grandmother used to make. I put on the cream dress he said he liked in our first year, back when he still said things like that. I set the table twice because my hands shook so badly the first time that I knocked a glass over.Then I stood in front of the hallway mirror and practiced."Saffron, I have something to tell you." I pressed my hand to my belly. "Good news, for once."I look

Saffron's POVThe boardroom on the twentieth floor always smelled like coffee and old money. That morning it smelled like a trap.I sat at the head of the long glass table with my mother on my right, her back straight, her pearls in place, both hands folded over her leather folder like a judge about to read a sentence. Six members of management filled the other chairs. Nobody was looking at the quarterly figures. They were all looking at me."The numbers are fine," old Mr. Hargrove said, clearing his throat. "That is not what we came to discuss.""Then what did we come to discuss?" I asked, though I already knew."You need an heir, Saffron." My mother did not even lower her voice. "The board needs someone to stand behind this name when you are gone. A second you."I looked at her. I knew exactly what she was really asking. She had been asking for five years, in every way a mother can, at dinners, at weddings, in the car, over the phone at midnight. Divorce her. Find someone who can gi

Isolde's POVThe lobby of the silver tower was colder than the hospital and ten times quieter. The floor was so polished I could see my own tired face in it, and the sight made me want to turn around and walk right back out.I didn't. I walked to the long marble desk where a young woman in a gray blazer was typing without looking at the keys."Good afternoon," I said. "I saw the sign outside. For the secretary position."She looked at me from my shoes to my hair, and I watched her decide what I was worth. "Interviews are by appointment only.""The sign said walk in.""The sign is outside. We are inside." She said it politely, which somehow made it worse. Then her eyes dropped to the clipboard beside her phone, and she sighed. "Fine. Fill this in. Take the elevator to the fourteenth floor. Ask for Mrs. Pell."The form wanted a resume. I wrote my name, my age, and my address on Marlowe Street, and left the rest empty. Under marital status I wrote divorced for the second time that day, a