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My Best Friend Faked a Pregnancy. I Ended a Real One.
Novelix
Completed
The day I learned I was pregnant with twins, my husband Ethan was lighting a candle with my best friend Sophie for the baby they'd lost together. I hadn't even known they were former lovers until after our wedding. Now, while I was building a future with him, they were quietly mourning the one they'd imagined together. He missed my appointment, forgot what hurt me, and kept choosing her. I finally asked for a divorce and booked an appointment to end my pregnancy. Ethan thought I was just being jealous. He had no idea how much I was ready to leave behind.
Chapters (4)
第1章
The doctor told me I was pregnant while my husband was lighting a candle for the child he'd lost with my best friend.
Two heartbeats, she said. Twins.
I lay still while she turned the screen toward me. Outside the exam room, someone laughed. A woman had brought her sister to her appointment, and they'd been arguing happily about baby names in the waiting room.
Ethan had promised to come with me.
The night before, I'd told him my period was late. He'd set down his phone, kissed my forehead, and said, "Nine o'clock. I'll be there."
At eleven, his assistant texted that something had come up.
At eleven fifteen, Sophie sent me a photograph of two candles in a little memorial chapel on the coast.
*He remembered the date. I thought I'd have to go alone this year.*
For months, she'd been telling me about the ex she couldn't get over. She never used his name. She said saying it made things worse.
I hadn't known who he was until my wedding night.
"Would you like a print?" the doctor asked.
I nodded. Then I asked about ending the pregnancy.
She didn't congratulate me again. She pulled her chair closer, asked what I wanted, and gave me time to answer. I booked an appointment for the next morning at the outpatient women's center attached to the hospital.
On the drive home, I kept both hands on the wheel. I didn't turn on the radio.
At our house, I found a suitcase and laid it open on the bed. When I lifted Ethan's coat from the chair, something small struck the floor.
A pink hair clip. A little plastic butterfly, faded almost white along one wing.
Sophie and I had bought matching ones when we were twelve. Mine had broken years ago.
I picked it up, sat at the kitchen table, and called my husband.
"I want a divorce."
He exhaled sharply. "What is it this time?"
Six months earlier, I'd done a tarot spread about our future. Ethan had watched me turn the cards, amused until I hesitated over the question of children.
He'd told me to put the deck away.
Now I laid out the same cards from memory.
"Remember that reading you hated?" I asked. "The one where I couldn't see children in your future?"
"Nora. Don't start."
"I've decided to stop arguing with it."
He hung up after telling me he was working late.
It was nearly two in the morning when he came home. I'd already taken our wedding photograph off the wall.
He noticed the pale rectangle it left behind, then held out a bakery box.
"Here. I came home, didn't I? Can we stop doing this?"
Inside was a slice of strawberry cake.
I used to love strawberry cake. When I was fifteen, my parents had driven out in the rain to buy one for my birthday. They never made it home.
I hadn't eaten it since.
Ethan knew that. I'd told him on the first birthday we'd spent together. He'd held me while I cried and bought a lemon tart instead.
Sophie had moved to England that same year. In all the messages we'd exchanged afterward, the cake had never come up. She still remembered the girl who used to scrape strawberry frosting from the cardboard with her finger.
Ethan opened the little packet containing a fork.
"And put those things away." He nodded at my cards. "My mother hates seeing them."
When he leaned over me, I smelled candle smoke beneath Sophie's gardenia perfume.
My eyes filled before I could stop them.
He sighed and pulled me against him. "Hey. Come on. Why have you been like this since the wedding?"
My phone chimed. His hand went immediately to his pocket.
Then he realized the sound hadn't come from his phone.
Sophie's message filled my screen.
*We lit a candle for the baby today. He's married now. I think I'm finally ready to let him go.*
Ethan's arm tightened around me.
On our wedding night, he'd fallen asleep drunk, still wearing his dress shirt. I'd been unpinning my hair when he started crying.
"Sophie," he'd whispered. "You came to my wedding. Why weren't you the bride?"
I'd stood there with a pin in my hand until he said her name again.
His phone had unlocked with her birthday.
They'd met in England during college, while he was there for a semester. I'd learned that from the dates on the pictures. Before then, the stories she'd told me had been about a boy with no name and a family that didn't approve of her.
Ethan hadn't known that the childhood friend I called Soph was his Sophie. She hadn't known the man I called Ethan was the man she'd lost. At least, that was what I'd tried to believe when I saw their startled faces at the rehearsal dinner.
But after that night, neither of them told me.
On his phone, among years of saved photographs and old conversations, I'd found a screenshot of something I'd sent her.
*He asked me to be his girlfriend!*
Her reply had been saved underneath it.
*I'm so happy for you, Nora. You deserve this.*
She'd wished me happiness. Then she'd kept talking to my husband about the life they should have had.
第2章
I took the fork from Ethan.
Some stubborn part of me wanted him to remember before I had to say it. I broke off a small piece of cake and put it in my mouth.
The sweet smell turned my stomach. I barely reached the sink.
"Seriously?" he said behind me.
I rinsed my mouth. My hands were trembling against the counter.
He took the box off the table and threw it. The lid came open against the wall, leaving a thick smear of cream above the baseboard.
I'd cleaned that wall the night before.
It seemed like such a stupid thing to notice. But I noticed it before the anger in his face, before the cake lying upside down on the floor.
"If you don't want it, don't eat it," he snapped. "Do you have any idea how long she spent looking for that bakery? Half the city, and you—"
He stopped.
I held out the butterfly clip.
"This fell out of your coat. Give it back to her."
For a moment, he looked almost frightened.
Then he snatched it from my palm and dropped it into the trash.
"I don't know what you're talking about."
He went upstairs. A minute later, the shower started.
I stood over the trash can. The little pink butterfly lay beside a coffee filter. When we were twelve, Sophie had made me promise we'd wear ours to each other's weddings.
Neither of us had.
I left it where it was.
My suitcase was still open in the bedroom. I moved it into the guest room and packed underwear, two sweaters, the folder containing the deed to my old townhouse, and my parents' photographs.
I didn't know how to divide a marriage. I did know which things had belonged to me before it.
The previous afternoon, after booking the clinic appointment, I'd contacted a family lawyer. Her intake forms were in my email. I'd also printed a simple separation proposal listing the property I wanted to keep. I hadn't signed it yet.
I put everything in a folder.
Then I answered Sophie.
*If you still want him, go after him.*
The shower stopped less than a minute later.
Ethan came down the stairs with wet hair, fastening his shirt as he walked.
"Something came up at the office."
I looked at the clock. Three in the morning.
"Of course."
He hesitated, as if my lack of questions had inconvenienced him. Then he took his keys and left.
Sophie messaged while I was wiping cake off the wall.
*I took your advice. Could you pull a card for me? Do you think he'll come?*
I looked down at my deck.
*Yes.*
Half an hour later, she posted a photograph. Two hands, fingers laced together, against the dark leather of a car seat.
The man's ring was gone. The pale mark beneath it was clearly visible.
I slid off my own wedding band. Ethan had designed it himself, with a small curve on the inside that he'd said would make it more comfortable.
For months, I'd turned that detail over in my mind whenever I needed proof that he loved me. A man who cared how a ring felt against my skin couldn't mean to hurt me. There had to be an explanation.
I opened the kitchen window and threw it into the dark.
My phone lit again.
*You were right! He came!*
I tapped the heart beneath her photograph.
Ethan called almost immediately.
"Knew you'd still be awake," he said. Voices sounded behind him. "I'm with clients. Don't wait up. And take a blanket if you're staying downstairs. You always get cold."
He sent a picture afterward. His assistant, Luke, sat beside him at a table covered with glasses.
Ethan had never sent proof of where he was before.
I enlarged the photograph, then stopped. I didn't need to figure out who had moved out of the frame.
Instead, I went into his study.
If he could still remember that I got cold downstairs, I wanted to know what else he'd remembered. What parts of our life had been real.
His computer asked for a password.
I entered Sophie's birthday.
This time, the screen stayed locked.
第3章
Beside the keyboard was a photograph of us on the beach.
I'd met Ethan on the anniversary of my parents' death. I'd gone down to the water alone, taken off my shoes, and floated beyond the little waves breaking against the shore.
I wasn't trying to die. I wanted a few minutes without the phone calls I couldn't return or the empty house waiting for me.
Ethan had seen a woman lying motionless in the water and come in after me, still wearing his jeans.
By the time we reached the sand, he was shaking harder than I was.
"You scared the hell out of me," he'd said.
I'd laughed, then started crying. He'd stayed.
When I asked whether I could lean against him for a minute, he'd put his arm around me without asking for an explanation.
A woman walking past thought we were a couple. She took a photograph, apologized, and offered to delete it. Ethan asked her to send it instead.
In the picture, the sun was going down behind us. My eyes were swollen, but I was smiling.
I'd once believed my parents had sent him to me.
I touched the edge of the frame and entered my birthday.
The computer opened.
My face filled the screen.
There were folders of photographs: me asleep on a flight, me laughing with flour on my cheek, me holding a book out toward him in a store. Some I didn't remember him taking.
In a folder labeled with our wedding date, I found sketches of my dress.
Dozens of them. Different sleeves, different necklines, little notes about the way I hated anything tight around my ribs. He'd worked with the designer for months.
I sat down.
There were dates beside the files. This was our life, not a collection he'd assembled after I'd begun asking questions.
I opened a note from the week we'd moved in together.
*She puts her cold feet on my legs and pretends she's asleep. Buy the heavy blanket she keeps looking at.*
I remembered that blanket arriving. I'd teased him about the price, then wrapped both of us in it on the couch.
I read the sentence again until it blurred.
For a moment, I wanted to call him back into that life so badly that the rest of the night seemed negotiable. He could come home. He could tell her it was over. We could sit at the kitchen table and be ugly and honest with each other.
I called.
He didn't answer.
I tried again.
On the sixth call, I typed a message, then erased it. On the tenth, I got up to get water and came back without it.
I kept looking at the wedding dress sketches.
*Choose me this time,* I thought. *Just this once, when it actually costs you something.*
On the nineteenth call, the line opened.
"Ethan?"
No answer. I heard a rustle, an unsteady breath, and Sophie's voice, low and close.
I knew what I was hearing before he spoke.
"Let's have another baby, Soph."
My phone slipped out of my hand.
It hit the floor, but the call didn't end. Their voices came from beneath the desk. I bent down, found the screen, and disconnected.
For a while, I stayed on the floor.
Then I got up and closed every file I'd opened. The photograph on the desk remained where it was.
He'd loved me enough to learn how I took my coffee, enough to draw a hundred dresses, enough to buy a blanket before I asked for it.
Whatever he'd felt, it had not stopped him.
That was the answer I'd been refusing to accept.
At six, his message arrived.
*Had too much to drink. Come get me at Harbor Club.*
I washed my face and signed my separation proposal. In the same folder, I put the appointment itinerary the clinic had sent me. It included the pregnancy information, the procedure scheduled for that morning, and a space where a support person could acknowledge the pickup arrangements.
The clinic didn't need my husband's permission. I hadn't listed him as my ride home.
But he'd asked me to drive him. He could at least look at what I was carrying.
Outside, my wedding ring was caught in the hedge beneath the kitchen window.
I pulled it free and dropped it into the trash by the sidewalk.
A woman sweeping leaves looked up. "You sure about that?"
"Yes," I said.
This time, I was.
第4章
Luke met me in the corridor outside the club's private rooms.
"Nora." He glanced over his shoulder. "I didn't realize you were coming."
"Ethan asked me to pick him up."
"Right. Let me just—"
I walked past him. He hurried after me, coughing loudly as I approached the door.
Through the glass panel, I saw Sophie sitting against my husband's side. His oldest friends were crowded around the table. I'd spent enough evenings with them to recognize every voice.
"So you two finally worked it out?" one of them asked.
Sophie lowered her eyes. "Don't say that. Ethan's married. We're friends."
She said it with his hand resting on her thigh.
"Please. We all know who he belongs with."
Another man laughed. "Nora got the finished version of you and still complains. Sophie did all the hard work."
I'd wondered why these men barely spoke to me at dinners. Why every story from their college years stopped when I came to the table.
Now I knew.
Ethan looked at Sophie with an expression I recognized. I'd seen it across restaurant tables, over the rim of his coffee cup, beside me in bed on slow Sunday mornings.
"They're right," he told her quietly.
Behind me, Luke stopped coughing.
"Do you think so too?" I asked him.
His mouth opened. Nothing came out.
In my bag, I found the stomach medicine I always carried for Ethan. He drank too much at business dinners and forgot to eat until his stomach hurt.
I put it in Luke's hand.
"Give him this. Don't tell him I was here."
I waited in the car for almost an hour.
When they finally came out, Ethan was carrying Sophie. Her arms were around his neck, her face turned into his shoulder.
I tapped the horn.
Both of them looked up.
"What are you doing here?" Ethan asked.
"Nora, it's not—" Sophie started.
She slid out of his arms so quickly that he had to catch her elbow.
"You're my husband," I said. "She's my best friend. What could I possibly misunderstand?"
Neither answered.
"Sorry I was late. I didn't see your message right away."
Ethan studied me. "Were you asleep?"
"Eventually."
Sophie pressed a hand to her forehead. "I got dizzy. We ran into each other, and he didn't want to leave me alone. For your sake."
For my sake, they both got into the back seat.
For my sake, his hand found hers below the level of the window.
I took the folder from my bag before starting the engine. The car insurance renewal was on top. Beneath it were my separation proposal and the appointment itinerary.
"A few things need your signature."
"Now?"
"You're here."
He took the pen. I watched him sign the first page, then turn to the next place I'd marked. His name went beneath the words acknowledging receipt of the proposal. Then he signed the itinerary without looking at the heading.
The pages wouldn't end our marriage. They wouldn't make my medical decision for me. I'd known that when I put them in the folder.
What I hadn't known was how little attention he'd give them.
"Don't you want to read any of it?" I asked.
He looked up and gave me the warm, easy smile I'd missed for months.
"I trust you."
Beside him, Sophie watched my face. When her smile faltered, Ethan squeezed her fingers.
I took back the folder.
"Where to?"
"Sophie's place. The building on Chestnut, just past—"
He stopped.
Sophie leaned forward. "I mentioned the address earlier."
"Okay," I said, and put the car in drive.