“Leave her alone, Derek. At least she’s useful for something. You and Valerie deserve to be happy. Claire was always the difficult one. The cold, calculating one. The one whose body couldn’t give anyone children anyway. It’s nature’s way, really.”
The handles of the gift bag slipped from my trembling fingers, the paper crinkling slightly as I caught it against my hip. My mother knew. My own mother.
Then came Valerie’s voice, accompanied by the soft cooing of a newborn. She sounded radiant. Satisfied. Smug.
“Thank you, Mom,” Valerie said. “When Derek finally gets his partner promotion next year and divorces her, we’re going to be a real, proper family. Look at him, Derek. The baby looks so much like you. No one will be able to deny it when he gets older.”
Derek answered, and the overwhelming pride in his voice was something I had never, not once, heard him use when speaking to or about me.
“My son,” Derek murmured, his voice thick with emotion. “He’s going to have my last name. And Claire… well, Claire will just have to accept it. She always accepts everything in the end. She’s too obsessed with her pristine reputation to make a scene.”
I stood in the hallway, waiting for the tears to come. I waited for the stereotypical breakdown—the sobbing, the dramatic bursting through the door, the screaming matches. But it didn’t happen. The rage didn’t come first. What came first was a profound, chilling emptiness. It felt as if a surgeon had opened a door inside my chest and cleanly, surgically removed my heart, my six years of marriage, my trust, and my entire perception of reality.
