“I need an answer.”
“You needed an answer five years ago too.
You just did not want mine.”
That landed.
He glanced toward the boys, immediately aware they were listening.
I opened the Bentley door and helped them inside.
Their booster seats were already waiting.
The youngest started telling me about a paper airplane he had made that morning, entirely unaware that the man standing behind me was watching his whole life rearrange itself.
Before I got into the car, Blake said, “Please.”
I stopped.
That word was rare from him.
It had always been easier for Blake to command than ask.
I turned around.
He looked older than he had on the plane.
“Give me ten minutes.”
“No.”
“Emma.”
“They have been waiting for me all morning.”
“I did not know.”
Something in me went still.
“No,” I said.
“You did not.”
Then I got into the Bentley.
Blake stood at the curb as we drove away.
For the next twenty minutes, my sons filled the car with noise.
They fought over a toy dinosaur.
They told me what they wanted for lunch.
They complained that their grandmother had made them wear matching sweaters for the airport.
Normal things.
Beautiful things.
The kind of things Blake had missed while believing he had been the injured party.
My phone vibrated before we reached home.
A message from an unknown number appeared.
Emma.
This is Blake.
Please do not block me.
I need to understand.
I stared at it for several seconds.
Then another arrived.
Were you pregnant when we divorced?
I locked the screen.
The answer was complicated.
I had not known I was pregnant when Blake accused me of having an affair.
That was one of the cruelest details of the entire story.
Three weeks before our marriage collapsed, I had begun feeling exhausted and nauseated.
I assumed stress was responsible.
My research team was preparing for a major presentation, and Blake’s company was entering a brutal round of negotiations with investors.
At the same time, I had been exchanging messages with a physician involved in a private medical consultation.
The consultation had begun months earlier after Blake and I struggled to start a family.
We had never told the press.
We barely told our families.
Blake hated admitting that anything in his life could not be solved through planning, money or force of will.
I had undergone testing.
So had he.
Eventually we were told there was no obvious reason we had not conceived naturally, but my doctor recommended continued monitoring because of irregular hormone results.
The messages Blake found were about appointments, lab work and a test the doctor wanted repeated.
