Chapter 4
Chapter 4:
Nathan’s face, when I finally emerge from the bathroom, wears an expression I’m learning to recognize: impatience dressed up as patience. The tight jaw. The careful blankness in the eyes. The look of a man who is tolerating something beneath his dignity.
I am beneath his dignity now, apparently.
In the hallway, Meredith is crying softly—the kind of picturesque crying that leaves mascara perfectly intact. Nathan’s voice murmurs comfort I can’t quite make out, and then the crying subsides. I imagine his arms around her. I imagine him holding her the way he used to hold me, back when I was the one who needed protecting.
That’s when the thought surfaces, clear and cold and utterly alien: divorce.
The word floats through my mind like a leaf on still water. I’ve never thought it before—not seriously, not even during our worst arguments. We were Nathan-and-Vivian, high school sweethearts, the couple everyone envied. Divorce was something that happened to other people.
But standing here, listening to my husband comfort another woman in my home while I rinse the taste of vomit from my mouth, the word doesn’t seem so foreign anymore.
I look down at my stomach. Still flat, still invisible, still our secret. Except it was never “our” secret, was it? It was mine. He didn’t tell Meredith. He doesn’t mention it if he can avoid it. Since I told him about the pregnancy, his face has worn a permanent expression of vague worry, like a man who’s been handed a problem he didn’t ask for.
I’m sorry, baby, I think, pressing my palm against my abdomen. You haven’t even had a chance to see this world yet, and already it’s so complicated.
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Midnight. The apartment is dark, Meredith safely installed in the nursery-that-isn’t. Nathan slides into bed beside me, and I catch the scent of him—except it’s not quite him anymore. There’s something else layered underneath, floral and unfamiliar. Her perfume, probably. Absorbed into his clothes, his skin.
I turn my back to him.
“Vivian.” His voice is carefully patient. “I know you’re not happy about Meredith staying here. But I promised her. She won’t be here long. She’s vulnerable right now—she just needs a little care p>
She’s vulnerable. Always the same refrain. And what about me? Nine weeks pregnant, sick every morning, married to a man who’s falling in love with someone else. Am I not vulnerable?
“Whatever you want,” I say to the darkness.
A pause. Then his hand finds my waist, slides around to my hip. His breath quickens against the back of my neck.
My entire body goes rigid.
“Nathan.” My voice comes out flat, dead. “You remember I’m pregnant, right p>
The hand freezes. Then withdraws.
A silence stretches between us, wide as an ocean.
“Goodnight, Vivian p>
He turns away, putting as much distance between us as the bed allows. I stare at the gauze curtains moving softly in the breeze from the cracked window and remember another night—the night we bought this house. How he’d wrapped his arms around me and cried actual tears of happiness. “We finally have our home, Viv,” he’d whispered. “Our warm, sweet home p>
I believed him. God help me, I believed every word.
When did it change? Was it after Meredith’s divorce, when she suddenly became available again? Or was it earlier—was I always just a placeholder, a warm body to occupy the space until she was ready for him?
Exhaustion finally drags me under. In my dreams, Nathan waves to me from across a field, smiling that old smile, the one I fell in love with. I run toward him, but the faster I run, the further away he gets. Then the fog rolls in, thick and cold, and I’m lost—
A scream tears through the apartment.
My eyes snap open. Nathan is already on his feet, already running, and I hear it: Meredith, gasping and choking. Allergic reaction, my sleep-addled brain supplies. The roses. The white roses I bought last week and forgot to throw away.
Nathan rushes past without a glance in my direction, his face wild with panic.
I don’t think he even remembers I’m here.