Chapter 2

I drove home on autopilot, the familiar streets of our neighborhood looking alien and hostile. The world outside the car was muted, gray. The real storm was inside me.

I walked into the house we had built together, a home now tainted by betrayal. The first thing I saw was the door to the nursery. It was slightly ajar.

My mother was inside.

She was humming, a soft, happy tune, as she carefully folded a tiny blue onesie. The room was a testament to our shared dreams. A hand-painted mural of stars and clouds covered one wall. A crib, painstakingly assembled by my own hands, stood in the corner. Stacks of books and stuffed animals waited for a child who would never arrive.

"Ethan, you're home early!" she said, turning with a bright smile. Her eyes were filled with the pure, unadulterated joy of a grandmother-to-be. "Look at this, isn't it the cutest thing? I couldn't resist. How's Olivia feeling? Did you two decide on a name yet?"

Her smile faltered as she saw my face. "Ethan? What is it? You're white as a sheet. Is Olivia okay? Is the baby...?"

I couldn't speak. I just shook my head, a single, helpless gesture.

Her eyes darted from my face to my hands, empty of the flowers or takeout I usually brought home. Then she looked past me, down the hall, expecting to see Olivia waddle in behind me. When she didn't, a deep, primal fear entered my mother' s eyes.

She stepped out of the nursery, her hand flying to her mouth. She looked at me, then at the empty space where Olivia' s belly should have been. The question was there, in her horrified gaze.

"Mom," I started, my voice breaking. "There was... a complication."

It was a weak lie, a desperate attempt to shield her from the grotesque truth. But one look at my shattered expression told her everything.

"No," she whispered, her face crumbling. "Oh, God, no. Not your baby. Not my grandson."

She sagged against the doorframe, the tiny onesie slipping from her fingers and falling to the floor. The sight of it, a small patch of blue on the beige carpet, broke me. The sobs I had been holding back erupted from my chest, violent and ragged.

My mother wrapped her arms around me, her own tears soaking my shoulder. We stood there, two shipwrecked souls clinging to each other in the wreckage of our family.

Later, after the storm of grief had passed into a heavy, suffocating calm, we sat in the living room. The silence was broken only by the ticking of the clock on the mantle.

"What happened, Ethan?" my mother asked, her voice raw. "The doctors... they said he was strong."

I couldn't tell her the whole truth. Not yet. How could I explain that her daughter-in-law had sacrificed her grandchild on the altar of a deranged obsession?

"She lost him," I said, the partial truth feeling like a betrayal of its own.

But my mother was sharp. She had never fully trusted Olivia, had always seen a flicker of selfishness behind her charming smile.

"Where is she?" my mother asked, her tone hardening. "Why isn't she here, grieving with you?"

"She's... at the hospital," I mumbled. "She's not well."

"Is she with that man?" The question was sharp, direct. "That Liam?"

I flinched, and that was all the answer she needed. A look of pure fury crossed her face.

"I knew it," she seethed. "I knew he was trouble the moment he slithered back into her life. To leave you alone at a time like this... to be with him... Ethan, how can you stand for this?"

"Mom, it's complicated."

"No, it's not!" she stood up, pacing the room. "It is simple. A man is supposed to be with his wife. A mother is supposed to mourn her child. She is doing neither. She is with another man. After everything you've done for her, everything you've given her. This is how she repays you?"

She stopped in front of me, her eyes blazing. "You get her back here, Ethan. You tell her to come home and face what she's done. Or so help me, I will go to that hospital and drag her out myself. This has to end. Her and that man. It ends now, or your marriage ends. You cannot let her destroy you."

Her words were an ultimatum, born of love and rage. And as I sat there, surrounded by the ghosts of my future, I began to see the past with a painful new clarity.

I thought about our marriage, about the countless times I had made excuses for Olivia's moods, for her strange attachment to her past. I had paid her debts, funded her failed business ideas, supported her through everything, all in the hope that one day she would finally, fully choose me. I had been a fool.

I had always been her safety net, her provider, the stable ground beneath her feet. But her heart had always been floating somewhere else, tethered to a memory. I wasn't her partner, I realized with a sickening lurch. I was her enabler. I had paid for the rope she used to hang me. The illusion of our happy life, our miracle baby, it was all a fantasy I had built for myself. And now, it had been burned to the ground. The worst part was knowing I had handed her the matches.

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