Chương 2
I watched him do it.
I watched the man who had just put a knife into me twice cover another woman because she was cold.
“It’s over,” he told her.
His voice softened.
“She won’t hurt you again.”
Chloe lowered her hands.
For one instant, she looked directly at me.
The crying stopped.
Her mouth curved.
Just slightly.
Then darkness began closing from the edges of my vision.
My palm landed on something beneath the kitchen table.
Hard plastic.
Small.
I curled my fingers around it without knowing why.
The last sound I heard was Blake shouting my name as if he had only just discovered I could die.
I woke three days later with a tube in my nose, tape pulling at my skin, and a machine counting my heartbeats for me.
I tried to sit up.
Pain tore through my abdomen.
A nurse appeared immediately.
“Easy.”
Her badge said MARISOL.
Her voice had the firm patience of someone accustomed to frightened people making bad decisions.
“Where am I?”
“St. Joseph’s.”
I swallowed.
My mouth tasted metallic.
“What day?”
“Friday.”
I closed my eyes.
Tuesday.
The kitchen had been Tuesday.
“Did I have surgery?”
“Yes.”
Her expression changed.
It was barely noticeable.
I saw it anyway.
I had spent years reading executives across conference tables.
People thought leaving finance had made me less observant.
It had only given me fewer places to use the skill.
“What happened?”
“The doctor should talk to you.”
“What happened?”
Marisol glanced toward the door.
That was enough.
My hand moved toward my stomach.
Under the blanket, thick dressings pulled at my skin.
Then another memory surfaced.
A white plastic stick on the edge of my bathroom sink.
Two pink lines.
A second test because I did not trust the first.
A lab appointment the next morning.
Eight weeks.
Twins.
I had laughed alone in my car because the technician had said there were two heartbeats and I thought she was joking.
“No,” I whispered.
Marisol reached for my hand.
I pulled away before she could touch me.
“Where are my babies?”
Her eyes filled before mine did.
I already knew.
Still, I made her say it.
“They couldn’t save them.”
A strange sound came from my throat.
Not crying.
Not yet.
I turned my face toward the window.
Traffic moved beyond the hospital glass.
A bus stopped at the corner.
Someone in blue scrubs crossed the street carrying iced coffee.
I watched the entire stupid world continue.
About twenty minutes later, Dr. Owen Hayes came in carrying a tablet and wearing the exhausted expression of a man who had already had several difficult conversations that morning.
He explained the surgery in plain language.
One wound had damaged my liver.
The other had caused severe abdominal bleeding.
I had required transfusions.
There would be more tests.
Recovery would be slow.
He did not drown me in percentages.
I appreciated him for that.
“The pregnancy,” I said.
He sat down.
“They were both lost.”
“Because of the stabbing?”
He hesitated.
“The trauma and blood loss were significant factors.”
I nodded.
My hands were lying on top of the blanket.
They looked like somebody else’s hands.
“Did Blake know?”
“About the pregnancy?”
“Yes.”
“Not when you arrived.”
I laughed once.
It hurt so badly I stopped.
“That sounds like him.”
Owen studied me.
“There’s another issue we need to discuss.”
Before he could continue, voices rose outside the room.
I recognized one immediately.
Blake.
“I’m her husband.”
The words came through the door.
A nurse answered him.
“You still need to wait.”
“I’ve waited three days.”
I turned toward Owen.
“Don’t let him in.”
He was already standing.
“You don’t have to see anyone you don’t want to see.”
The door opened before he reached it.
Blake stood there carrying white roses.
He had not shaved.
His shirt was wrinkled.
There were shadows beneath his eyes I might once have wanted to soothe.
The sight of him made my pulse jump on the monitor.
“Natalie.”
“Get out.”
His face crumpled.
“I need to talk to you.”
“No.”
“Natalie, please.”
Owen stepped between us.
“Mr. Stanford, she has asked you to leave.”
Blake ignored him.
“I didn’t know.”
I knew exactly what he meant.
Someone had told him.
Probably a detective.
Maybe the hospital.
Maybe my medical chart had destroyed the last defense he had built for himself.
“I didn’t know about the babies,” he said.
“Would it have mattered?”
His mouth opened.
Nothing came out.
That silence answered more honestly than anything he could have said.
Owen turned his tablet toward him.
An ultrasound image filled the screen.
Two small shapes rested inside the gray blur.
“Your wife was approximately eight weeks pregnant,” he said.
Blake stared.
“There were twins.”
The roses slipped from Blake’s hand.
They struck the floor softly.
For some reason, that sound broke something in me that the machines and blood and pain had not.
A month earlier, I had sat outside Blake’s office holding those ultrasound results in a cream envelope.
I had planned to tell him over dinner.
Then I heard Chloe’s voice through his partly open door.
“You said things would be different.”
Blake had answered, “I said you’d always matter to me.”
I went home with the envelope still sealed.
I told myself I was waiting for a better moment.
Now two small gray silhouettes were glowing on a hospital screen, and there would never be a better moment.
Blake gripped the back of a chair.
“I did this?”
I looked at him.
“Yes.”
He shook his head immediately, almost violently.
“No, I mean—I know what happened, but I didn’t know you were pregnant.”
“You stabbed me anyway.”
He sat down without being invited.
Tears ran over his face.
“I’m sorry.”
I felt nothing when he said it.
That frightened me more than hatred would have.
“I want a divorce.”
His head came up.
“No.”
“I wasn’t asking permission.”
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“Natalie, please don’t do this now.”
“Now is the first time in three years I’m completely sure.”
