Chapter 3

"I will love you, in sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer, until death do us part."

David' s wedding vows echoed in my mind, a ghostly whisper from a life that felt a million miles away. He had meant them, I thought. Back then, in that stuffy courthouse room, with no one but two witnesses, he had looked at me with such sincerity.

Where did that man go? When did this cold, cruel stranger take his place?

I looked at Emily, still nestled in our bed, her hand resting on her stomach. Her belly was slightly rounded. She was probably a few months along. He had been lying to me for months. While I was injecting myself with hormones, crying over negative pregnancy tests, he was creating a new life with another woman.

The thought was so vile it made me want to scream.

"What if it was me?" The words tumbled out of my mouth before I could stop them. My voice was hoarse, broken.

David, who was pulling on a pair of pants, paused. He turned to me, an eyebrow raised in cold curiosity.

"What if who was you?" he asked, his tone dripping with impatience.

"What if I was the one who was pregnant?" I asked, my eyes locked on his. I needed to see his reaction. I needed to know.

He stared at me for a long moment. Then, he laughed. It was not a happy sound. It was a cruel, mocking laugh that cut me deeper than any physical blow could.

"Don't be ridiculous, Sarah," he said, shaking his head. "We both know that' s not possible. The doctors said so."

He was right. After a year of trying, we had seen specialists. Dr. Evans had been kind, gentle. She' d explained that I had a condition that made getting pregnant difficult, but not impossible. David had been so supportive then, holding my hand, telling me it didn' t matter, that we would get through it together. Another lie.

"But what if it was?" I pushed, desperation making my voice high and thin.

He walked over to me, crouching down so his face was level with mine on the floor. His eyes were like chips of ice.

"If you were pregnant," he said slowly, deliberately, "I would assume it wasn' t mine. And I would still be with Emily."

Each word was a nail in my coffin.

My hand, as if with a will of its own, reached into my purse. My fingers closed around the plastic stick. With a final, desperate surge of strength, I pulled it out and held it up for him to see.

"It is possible, David," I whispered. "Because I am."

The two pink lines gleamed in the dim light of the bedroom.

For the first time since I had walked in, I saw a flicker of something in his eyes. Shock. Disbelief.

He snatched the test from my hand, his eyes wide as he stared at it.

Behind him, Emily gasped. "No. It' s not possible. He' s lying, David!"

David didn' t answer her. He just stared at the test, his jaw tight. For a single, insane moment, I thought I saw a flicker of the old David, the man who had wanted a family with me.

Then, the moment was gone.

His expression hardened into a mask of pure fury. With a sudden, violent movement, he snapped the pregnancy test in two. He threw the broken pieces on the floor next to me.

"It doesn' t matter," he snarled. "I don' t want it. I don' t want you."

He stood up, towering over me. He looked at me with such disgust, as if I were something he had scraped off the bottom of his shoe.

He wiped his hands on his pants, a gesture of such profound dismissal that it made me flinch. It was like he was wiping away me, our marriage, our unborn child.

"I' ll have my lawyer send you the divorce papers tomorrow," he said, his voice flat and final. He walked to the door, not even giving me a backward glance.

"Wait," Emily called out from the bed.

He paused.

"Don' t forget your wallet," she said.

He turned, walked back to the nightstand, picked up his wallet, and then walked out of the room, out of our home, out of my life.

The front door slammed shut, the sound echoing through the house like a gunshot.

I was left on the cold floor, surrounded by the broken pieces of my life. A sob ripped through me, a raw, animal sound of pure agony. I curled into a ball, my arms wrapped around my now-empty stomach, and wept.

I remembered another promise he' d made, on a night we' d spent looking at the stars from our backyard.

"I will never, ever leave you, Sarah. No matter what."

Lies. It was all lies.

How could this be happening? How could the man I loved, the life I had built, be gone in a single day?

The universe was playing a cruel, sick joke.

And I was the punchline.