Chapter 3

I looked at him — this face I had slept next to for years.

"If you hated me this much," I said, "why did you marry me?"

Something shifted in his expression. He reached up and brushed his fingers against my cheek — almost tender.

"I don't hate you, Mara. But you know what happened to you back then — it gets under a man's skin. There's always been a splinter." His hand dropped. "Once this is over, I won't see Vivian again. We go back to normal. We build something good." He gave me three days. "Think it over."

I looked at his face and felt nothing but revulsion.

When I returned to the corridor, I stood outside the room for a moment.

Through the glass panel, I could see Elliot beside Vivian's bed, speaking to her quietly. My mother was still unconscious in the room next door. Whatever had been left of my hope for this marriage dissolved on the spot.

I wasn't going to comply. Instead, I slipped away and called a private clinic to schedule a termination.

I couldn't keep this child.

The next morning, I went alone. I told no one.

I sat outside the procedure room and felt the weight of what I was about to do settle over me. This had been a child I'd wanted. I had spent weeks imagining what that life would look like.

And now I was here.

The nurse called my name. I stood, breathed, and walked through the door.

I had just reached out to sign the consent form when the door was shoved open.

Elliot.

He grabbed my arm and yanked me out of the chair before I could react, dragging me toward the exit. I fought him every step.

"Let go of me. I'm having a procedure—"

He didn't respond. He hauled me out of the building and pushed me into the car.

"I warned you not to try to leave," he said, starting the engine. "You didn't listen. So now there are consequences."

He drove us back to the hospital where my mother was admitted.

When he pushed open the door to my mother's room, Vivian was already there, sitting at the edge of the bed, peeling an apple. She looked up as we entered and gave a small, soft smile.

"You're back."

Elliot said nothing. He crossed the room, grabbed Vivian by the arm, and kissed her — hard, deliberate, unhurried.

Vivian went rigid with shock for half a second. Then her eyes closed and her arms went around his neck.

On the hospital bed, my mother's eyes flew open. Her mouth worked without sound. The color drained from her face.

The kiss lasted a long time. When Elliot finally pulled back, he turned and looked at my mother directly.

"I'm going to tell you a secret," he said, his voice carrying perfectly. "Vivian was never a ward from a group home. She's your husband's daughter. His biological daughter — by another woman. The girl you've spent years loving as your own is proof that your husband betrayed you."

My mother's lips trembled. "That can't be true."

Vivian's whole demeanor shifted. The soft helplessness fell away.

"It is," she said, with something almost like calm. "My mother told me before she died. She wanted me to find my father. He refused to acknowledge me, so I came on my own. Mara was the one who took me in."

The room seemed to tilt.

My mother opened her mouth again — and what came out was not words. It was a sound. High, broken, animal.

Then her body went rigid, and she was still.

"Mom!"

I was across the room before I knew I'd moved.

Doctors and nurses poured in at the sound of the crash from the monitors. They worked on her for what felt like a very long time.

The doctor came out looking grim.

"Severe cerebral hemorrhage following acute cardiac arrest," he said. "She's stable, but the brain damage is extensive. She's in a persistent vegetative state."

I couldn't cry. I stood outside the room and stared at nothing, the words not landing anywhere.

My mother. A vegetable.

The baby I had gone to terminate that morning.

Something cracked open inside me — not grief, not rage, just a total, hollow silence.

I got to my feet.

I walked.

The stairwell door. The fifth floor landing. The window at the end of the hall.

I don't remember making the decision. I only remember the moment I was over the railing, and then the air, and then nothing.

Behind me, Elliot's voice cut through the silence.

"Mara—!"

My back hit the tempered glass canopy on the third floor. It spiderwebbed under the impact — white fractures racing outward — and then gave way entirely.

I fell through in a shower of fragments and landed hard on the second-floor terrace. The concrete came up fast. Something in my right leg snapped on impact, a clean, terrible sound. Blood spread out beneath me, finding the cracks in the pavement.

I heard footsteps pounding down the stairwell. The fire door burst open. Elliot ran out onto the terrace, his shoes splashing through the pooling blood as he dropped to his knees beside me.

His hands hovered in the air above me, trembling. He didn't touch me.

"Mara."

His voice was raw.

I opened my eyes. He was right there, his face reflected in my vision.