Chapter 3: Our
I reached into the bag and picked up his phone.
Ethan's arm came up.
"Nora—"
"Don't." My voice came out quieter than I expected.
Steadier.
"Don't say my name like that right now."
He lowered his arm.
The message was from someone saved as "D." Just the letter.
One character where a full name should have been.
The full message read: *Our appointment is still Thursday.
Please tell me you're okay.
I've been sick with worry.*
I read it twice.
Then I set the phone back in the bag, very carefully, the way you set down something that might shatter.
"Who is D?" I asked.
"Nora, I need you to let me explain—"
"Who.
Is.
D."
Ethan closed his eyes.
When he opened them, he wasn't looking at me.
He was looking at the ceiling, the way people do when they're deciding how much of the truth to give you.
"Her name is Dana," he said.
The name landed in the room like something dropped from a height.
"Dana," I repeated.
"She works in the Riverside office.
We've been — we've been talking for about four months."
"Talking." I looked at the pregnancy test still visible through the plastic bag.
"Is that what that is?
Talking?"
"It's not mine," he said quickly.
"I mean — the test isn't mine.
Obviously.
But it's not — it's not what you think."
"You keep saying that.
You haven't told me what it actually is."
He pushed himself up against the pillow with his good arm, wincing.
"She asked me to pick it up for her.
From the pharmacy.
She didn't want anyone she knew to see her buying it."
I stood very still.
"Why would she ask you to do that?"
He didn't answer.
"Ethan.
Why would a woman you've been talking to for four months ask you — specifically you — to buy her a pregnancy test?"
The monitor beside his bed beeped softly.
Somewhere down the hall, a door opened and closed.
"Because she didn't have anyone else," he said finally.
"She's been going through something really hard and I was trying to help her."
"Help her," I said.
"Yes."
"By carrying her positive pregnancy test in your pocket."
"I was going to drop it off to her after work.
That's why I had it.
I was going to swing by her apartment on the way home."
I looked at him for a long moment.
At the man I had driven through five years of fertility treatments with.
At the man who had held my hand through every injection, every failed cycle, every morning I had cried in the shower so he wouldn't hear me.
At the man who had wept in the hospital parking lot the day our boys were born.
"Her apartment," I said.
"It's not like that."
"You know where she lives."
He said nothing.
I picked up the plastic bag.
I held it by the top, the way you carry something you don't want to touch.
"I'm going to go home," I said.
"I'm going to pick up our sons from the neighbor's house.
And when you're discharged, we are going to sit down and you are going to tell me everything.
Not the version you've been deciding on for the last five minutes.
Everything."
I walked to the door.
"Nora." His voice cracked on the second syllable.
"I love you.
I need you to know that."
I stopped with my hand on the door frame.
I didn't turn around.
"I know you do," I said.
"That's what makes this so much worse."
I walked out into the hallway.
A nurse smiled at me as I passed.
I smiled back.
I made it all the way to the elevator before my legs stopped working properly, and I had to put one hand against the wall and just breathe.
My phone buzzed in my pocket.
A text from a number I didn't recognize.
*Please don't be angry with him.
This is my fault.
May you like
All of it.
Can we talk?*
