“There’s someone else, isn’t there?”
Eric stopped.
He didn’t answer.
He didn’t need to.
“Who?”
“Tessa.”
I knew the name.
A woman from his gym.
I’d met her once.
She had smiled at me while I was visibly pregnant and told me Eric talked about me “all the time.”
Apparently not kindly.
“How long?”
“Claire, it doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me.”
He sighed as though I were inconveniencing him.
“I need a chance to be happy again.”
I stared at him.
“And Chloe?”
Our daughter’s name made his jaw tighten.
“You wanted this baby more than I did.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
Then something else occurred to me.
I opened our banking app.
The balance made my stomach drop.
“Eric.”
He kept putting things into his suitcase.
“Where’s the money?”
He didn’t look at me.
“What money?”
“Our savings.”
Silence.
“Eric.”
“I moved it.”
“You took all of it?”
“I contributed most of it.”
I stared at the nearly empty account.
“That was our emergency fund.”
“You have a paycheck.”
“My maternity leave starts soon.”
He shrugged.
“Then you’ll figure it out.”
I don’t remember exactly what I said after that.
I remember asking how I was supposed to pay the mortgage.
I remember reminding him we had medical bills coming.
I remember asking how he could possibly walk away weeks before his daughter was born.
Eventually, he looked at my stomach and said:
“You’re the one who wanted this baby so badly.”
Then he left.
Before dinner.
For the next month, my life became a calculation.
Which bill could wait?
What could I cancel?
What could I sell?
How little could I spend on groceries?
I sold jewelry.
Canceled subscriptions.
Stopped buying anything that wasn’t absolutely necessary.
I didn’t tell many people what was happening because I was embarrassed.
Looking back, I don’t know why.
Eric should have been embarrassed.
But somehow, I carried it for him.
Then, during a routine appointment, my doctor stopped smiling.
My blood pressure was dangerously high.
There were more tests.
More people entering the room.
Then someone said:
“We need to deliver.”
“What?”
“Today.”
Everything happened too quickly after that.
Chloe arrived by emergency C-section at thirty-four weeks.
She was tiny.
