I leaned forward.

The woman turned her face, and I recognized her.

Freya Bennett.

My fingers locked around the steering wheel.

I knew who she was. Everyone in Damon's circle knew who she was. His college girlfriend, the one who'd left the country years ago, the one whose name occasionally surfaced in old photographs or half-finished stories that stopped whenever I walked into the room. I had told myself it didn't matter. That she was history. That three years of marriage counted for more than a girl he'd known before I existed in his life.

I watched him guide her toward the entrance. Watched the way he kept his hand at her back.

I looked up at the building's small brass plaque by the door.

A private obstetrics clinic.

I sat back in my seat.

Something cold moved through me, slow and thorough, like water filling a room. I thought about the two years of appointments and treatments and careful hope. I thought about the doctor's face yesterday morning when she smiled and slid the report across the desk. I thought about the lilies I'd cut from the garden and the silver candlesticks and the steak that went cold on the table.

I thought about all the small warmths I had collected and catalogued and called love.

The way he remembered my birthday. The way he called the best doctor when I was sick. The way he'd made that quiet sound of acknowledgment when I'd pointed at the necklace in the boutique window.

I had read all of it as evidence of something melting. As proof that underneath the distance and the silence, he was coming toward me.

But sitting here now, looking at the door that had closed behind them, I understood something I hadn't let myself understand before. He had been a good husband the way a person is good at a job they've accepted. He had given me the name, the house, the consideration. He had done everything the role required.

He just hadn't given me the part that mattered.

Freya was the part that mattered.

I don't know how long I sat there. The street was quiet. Occasionally a car passed. I kept my hands in my lap and watched the door and told myself I was waiting for an explanation that would make all of this make sense.

An hour went by.

The clinic door opened.

I straightened up.

They came out together, Damon a half-step ahead, a folded paper in his hand. He looked down at it, his expression calm and unreadable. Freya walked beside him with her hand through his arm, her face tilted up toward him, saying something I couldn't hear. She was smiling.

Then she lifted her free hand and pressed it lightly against her stomach.

The bottom dropped out of me.

I pulled myself back. I made myself think clearly. An obstetrics clinic handled more than one kind of appointment. Maybe she was here for something unrelated. Maybe the gesture meant nothing. I repeated this to myself until it almost sounded reasonable.

His car pulled away from the curb.

I was still sitting there, not moving, when my phone buzzed.

The same number. No name, no context. Just a new file.

I stared at the notification for a long moment. My thumb hovered over the screen. Then I opened it.

The footage was shaky, shot through a gap in a door. The angle was tight and the image kept shifting, but the audio was clear. Freya was seated in an examination room, and a doctor's voice came through without distortion.

Six weeks.

The doctor said it plainly, the way doctors say things that are simply facts.

Freya Bennett was six weeks pregnant.

I lowered the phone to my lap.

Six weeks.

I turned the number over in my mind, trying to attach it to a calendar, to something concrete. Six weeks ago - I stopped. I remembered exactly. Six weeks ago, Damon had told me he had a business trip. A full week, he'd said. I had packed his bag myself. I had tucked his antacids into the inside pocket of his suitcase, the ones he always forgot to bring. I had told him to eat properly and not to push himself too hard.

But now I realize he was completely lying. How dare he?