Chapter 1 - THE SON HE HELD UP LIKE PROOF
Connor Fleming shoved me hard enough that the heel of my pump skidded across the polished floor of Riverbend Children’s Hospital.
Not hard enough to knock me down.
Hard enough to make sure I knew he meant it.
“You couldn’t give me children.”
His voice carried farther than he probably intended. A receptionist glanced up. A father holding a toddler stopped halfway to the elevators.
I straightened my white coat and stared at the man I had once spent twelve years sleeping beside.
One year after our divorce, Connor still knew exactly where to put the knife.
Behind him, my former best friend, Melinda Travis, crouched beside a stroller.
And inside it sat a blond little boy who looked about a year old.
Connor followed my eyes and smiled.
There was pride in that smile, but not the kind I saw on parents’ faces every day.
It was victory.
“This is Mason,” he said.
Melinda lowered her eyes.
My throat tightened.
I had known about the baby. Mutual friends had made sure of that. St. Louis could feel remarkably small when people wanted gossip to travel.
What I had never done was calculate his exact age.
Not until that moment.
Mason had been conceived before Connor and I were legally divorced.
Possibly before he had even moved out.
Connor stepped closer.
“You always said you wanted a family.”
“I did.”
“Guess you just weren’t capable of giving me one.”
Melinda whispered, “Connor.”
He ignored her.
He caught my forearm and pulled me toward him, turning slightly so I had no choice but to see the stroller.
“She gave me a family.”
Something in me went very still.
For years, that sentence would have destroyed me.
There had been fertility appointments. Blood draws before dawn. Hormone panels. Ultrasounds squeezed between hospital rounds. There had been calendars on the refrigerator and arguments about timing.
There had also been Connor refusing, again and again, to complete the testing his doctors requested.
He had always had a reason.
Business trip.
Client emergency.
Wrong appointment time.
Embarrassment.
Then eventually anger.
And somehow, somewhere along the way, the problem had become mine.
I pulled my arm free.
“Don’t touch me again.”
Connor laughed.
Melinda looked toward the elevator.
Not at me.
Not at Connor.
At the elevator.
Her face had changed.
She looked afraid.
That was the first thing that didn’t fit.
The second was the baby bottle in her hand.
She was gripping it so tightly her knuckles had whitened.
Connor pointed at me.
“You know what your problem always was?”
I knocked his hand away.
“Are you sure, Connor?”
His smile thinned.
“Sure about what?”
Footsteps sounded behind him.
Measured. Unhurried.
Melinda’s eyes closed for half a second.
A silver-haired man in a charcoal suit crossed the lobby carrying a sealed legal folder.
I recognized him vaguely from Clayton legal circles, though I couldn’t immediately place him.
Connor turned.
The man stopped directly in front of him.
“Mr. Fleming.”
“Who the hell are you?”
“Kenneth Boyd.”
Melinda stood too quickly and bumped the stroller wheel.
Kenneth looked at her first.
Not me.
That told me he hadn’t come for Connor.
He hadn’t come for me either.
He had come because Melinda knew he was coming.
Kenneth pressed the sealed folder against Connor’s chest.
“He needs the truth,” he said.
The bottle slipped out of Melinda’s hand.
It struck the floor, rolled beneath a row of waiting-room chairs, and stopped against my shoe.
Connor looked at the folder.
Then at Melinda.
May you like
And instead of asking what Kenneth meant, my ex-husband said something that made every hair rise along my arms.
“You promised me nobody would ever know.”
