Chương 3
After Emily left, Lauren stood.
"I need to see the envelope."
Mark looked alarmed.
"Lauren."
"I need to."
He reached toward it.
She pulled it away.
"Don't."
That single word stopped him.
She opened the envelope carefully.
Inside was a folded piece of paper.
Her hands were steady.
Mine were not.
She read it once.
Then again.
Her expression slowly changed.
"What?"
I stepped closer.
She handed me the paper.
It was a printed medical result.
The name at the top was Lauren's.
The date matched.
The information matched.
The only thing that looked wrong was the final line.
It stated the baby was male.
A boy.
Not a girl.
I looked at Mark.
He looked just as confused.
"Then why did the cake say girl?"
Nobody answered.
The answer came from somewhere else.
A small sound.
A phone vibrating on the counter.
All three of us looked toward it.
It was Mark's phone.
A message had appeared on the screen.
Rachel.
Lauren saw the name.
Mark saw it too.
Neither of them moved.
Finally, Lauren picked up the phone.
Mark did not stop her.
The message was short.
"Did she find out yet?"
Lauren's fingers went still.
The room seemed to shrink.
She looked at Mark.
"Did who find out what?"
Mark's face lost all color.
"I don't know."
That was the wrong answer.
Not because it was impossible.
Because it was familiar.
The same words.
The same helpless expression.
The same pattern.
Lauren put the phone down.
"I need you to leave."
Mark stared at her.
"Lauren."
"I said leave."
"I have nowhere to go."
The honesty in his voice almost made the situation harder.
For a second, he looked less like a betrayer and more like a scared man who had made choices he could not undo.
But fear did not erase damage.
Lauren looked at him.
"Then figure it out."
Mark nodded slowly.
He walked toward the door.
Before he left, he stopped.
"I love you."
Lauren looked away.
He stood there for several seconds.
Then he left.
I followed him outside.
Not because I wanted to comfort him.
Because I wanted answers.
The guests were still there.
Nobody knew what had happened.
Mark walked through them quietly.
A few people asked if everything was okay.
He smiled and said yes.
That bothered me.
Even after everything.
He still protected the appearance of normal.
When he reached his car, I stepped closer.
"Who is Rachel?"
He gripped the door handle.
"I told you."
"No."
I shook my head.
"You told me a name."
He looked tired.
"She works in my department."
"Why would she send you that message?"
"I don't know."
"Why would she help change the gender result?"
"I don't know."
"Why would she know about a private medical result?"
His silence answered.
He looked toward the house.
Toward Lauren.
"I think someone used me."
I hated that part of me believed him.
Because people can do terrible things without being the person who started them.
They can be weak.
They can be afraid.
They can make one bad choice and then spend months protecting it because admitting the truth means admitting who they became.
"Find out," I said.
Mark looked at me.
"What?"
"Before you lose everything."
He nodded.
Then he got into his car.
I watched him drive away from the house where his daughter's first celebration had turned into the beginning of a family crisis.
When I went back inside, Lauren was sitting at the kitchen table with both hands wrapped around a glass of water she had not touched.
She looked smaller than she had that morning.
Not weaker.
Just exhausted.
"I hate that I still want to understand him," she said.
I sat across from her.
"That's because you love him."
She stared at the glass.
"I don't know if that's a good thing."
"It isn't always."
She gave a quiet laugh.
"That's not very comforting."
"I wasn't trying to be."
For the first time all day, she almost smiled.
Almost.
Then she looked at the ultrasound picture sitting near the decorations.
A tiny black-and-white image that had caused so much happiness only hours earlier.
"What if he is a boy?"
I looked at her.
"What?"
"What if the real result is a boy?"
She touched the picture.
"I spent months imagining a little girl because that's what everyone told me."
Her voice became softer.
"What if I was celebrating a lie?"
I reached across the table and held her hand.
"You are not going to love that baby because of a cake."
She nodded, but tears slipped down her face anyway.
"I know."
This time, when she said it, I believed her.
Because she was not trying to convince anyone else.
She was trying to remind herself.
Outside, the decorations moved slightly in the afternoon breeze.
Pink balloons floated above the yard.
A color that suddenly felt less like an answer and more like a question.
The next morning, I found Lauren sitting on the back steps before the sun had fully risen.
She was wearing the same sweatshirt she had worn the night before, and her hair was pulled back in a loose knot that looked like she had stopped caring halfway through fixing it.
The yard was still covered with pieces of the celebration everyone had forgotten to clean up.
A paper plate sat upside down near the fence.
A few pink balloons had fallen into the grass.
The congratulations banner still hung across the patio.
It looked like evidence from a happier version of the day.
I sat beside her without speaking.
For a while, neither of us said anything.
A bird landed near the flower bed and hopped around the empty cups left from the party.
Normal things continued happening.
That was the strange part.
The world did not know it was supposed to stop.
"I barely slept," Lauren said.
Her voice sounded rough.
May you like
"I kept thinking about all the moments I trusted him."
I looked at her.
