Erin POV
The drive home was a blur of Christmas lights, each one a cruel mockery. Chloe drove, her knuckles white on the steering wheel, her silence a comfort. She insisted on coming up, checking every room of the sprawling apartment as if expecting an intruder.
"He's not here," she announced, her voice tight. "Do you want me to stay?"
I shook my head, a bone-deep exhaustion settling over me. "No. Thank you, Chloe. But I need to do this alone."
After my friend left, the silence of the apartment pressed in, suffocating. This place, my dream, now felt like a beautifully decorated tomb. I walked on numb legs to the room that had been my joy for the past few months.
The nursery.
I pushed the door open. My breath caught. The room was wrong. A large, empty space gaped in the center of the plush rug. The crib—the hand-carved oak crib I had spent weeks researching, the one I had traced my fingers over in the catalog at 2 a.m., imagining our baby sleeping in it—was gone.
My eyes darted around the room. The matching changing table was also missing. I tore open the closet. The tiny, soft onesies I had washed and hung with such care, my hands folding each one like a prayer—gone. The shelves were bare.
The breath left my body in a rush. It was a violation so deep it felt physical, as if he'd reached into my chest and torn something vital out.
A key turned in the front door.
Aiden walked in, bringing a gust of cold night air with him. He saw me standing in the doorway of the empty nursery. A flicker of something—guilt, maybe—crossed his face before being replaced by a mask of weary indignation.
"There you are," he said, his voice sharp. "I've been calling. Is this how a wife is supposed to act?"
I didn't respond. My gaze remained fixed on the empty space on the floor. "The crib," I said, my voice a raw whisper. "Where is it?"
Aiden's eyes shifted away. "What? Oh, that. There was a quality issue. I had the company take it back for repairs."
The lie was so bald, so insulting, a hysterical laugh bubbled in my throat. I remembered showing him the delivery confirmation, my face glowing with joy. He had barely glanced up from his laptop. Now I knew why. He'd already seen it—in someone else's nursery.
I took a step toward him, my voice gaining a dangerous edge. "Who did you give it to, Aiden? Who did you give our baby's things to?"
His composure cracked. "What is wrong with you?" he yelled, his voice echoing in the silent apartment. "I told you, it's being repaired! You're being hysterical!"
A memory flashed. A month ago, at a restaurant, they had "run into" a very pregnant Debbra. She had sighed over a simple gold necklace Aiden had given me. "It's so beautiful. You're so lucky. I have nothing."
Aiden had turned on me then, his voice low and cutting. "Can't you have a little compassion?"
It wasn't a chance encounter. It was a performance. A deliberate humiliation, staged for my benefit.
The realization, coupled with the empty nursery, broke something inside me. Pain and betrayal coalesced into a single point of white-hot rage. I lunged and slapped him across the face, the sound a sharp crack in the stillness.
Aiden stumbled back, stunned, his hand flying to his cheek. His shock morphed into fury. He grabbed my wrist, his grip like iron. "You're insane!"
The pain in my wrist was sharp, but my eyes were clear and cold. "You make me sick."
He let go of me as if I'd burned him. For a second, shame flickered across his face, but it was quickly extinguished by selfishness. He straightened his tie.
"Fine," he said, his voice clipped. "You saw. Debbra just had a baby. She has nothing. I was just helping her out."
He had the audacity to sound reasonable. "Those things were just sitting here anyway," he added, his gaze flicking toward the empty room. "And since you're so..."
The unspoken words hung between us, thick and poisonous. Since you're getting rid of the baby anyway.
He believed my child was disposable. He had already erased it.
As if on cue, his phone buzzed. He glanced at the screen, and his entire demeanor softened. He walked out onto the balcony, sliding the glass door partially shut, but I could still hear his voice drop to a low, loving murmur I knew wasn't for me.
"Hey, baby, don't worry, I'll be back soon... Yes, I'm just wrapping up this business trip. It's almost over."
A business trip. That's what he called our marriage.
Aiden left minutes later, throwing a final, venomous, "Don't be irrational," over his shoulder. The door clicked shut, the sound of a coffin lid closing.
I slid down the wall, landing in a heap on the polished hardwood floor. The empty nursery gaped at me, a wound in the heart of my home. A tremor started in my hands, spreading until my whole body shook.
My phone was in my pocket. With fumbling fingers, I pulled it out, my thumb hovering over the Instagram icon. A masochistic impulse. I typed Debbra May into the search bar. Her profile was public.
The first photo was a punch to the gut. Posted three hours ago. Debbra, glowing, cradling a newborn. The caption: Our little family is finally complete.
In the background, perfectly in focus, stood the hand-carved oak crib. My crib.
My thumb swiped upwards, a frantic scroll through a life that had run parallel to my own, built on my tears.
A photo from four years ago. Debbra and Aiden, kissing in front of the Eiffel Tower. The same month he had told me he was at a banking conference in Frankfurt.
Another, from three years ago. Aiden's arm around her at a Christmas party I hadn't been invited to. "Work event," he'd said. "Boring. You'd hate it."
Another, from six months ago. I stopped scrolling. My heart stopped with it.
Aiden's parents, Richard and Eleanor Pittman, stood on either side of a visibly pregnant Debbra, their hands placed lovingly on her belly. Eleanor's smile was the exact one she'd given me at our engagement party—the one I'd believed was reserved for me.
The caption read: So blessed to have the best in-laws.
I zoomed in, my fingers numb. On the coffee table behind them, in an ornate silver frame, sat a sonogram photo. Debbra's baby. Dated the same week I had mailed my own sonogram to Eleanor, tucked inside a handwritten card that said "Your first grandchild says hello."
She had never responded to my card. Not a call. Not a text.
She had framed Debbra's.
I understood now. It wasn't just Aiden. It was all of them. For four years, the entire Pittman family had known. They had smiled at me across dinner tables, accepted my holiday gifts, patted my hand and asked when I'd give them grandchildren—all while keeping Debbra warm in the wings, waiting for the right moment to replace me.
Four years. His entire family. My whole marriage was a meticulously crafted lie.
The world tilted, a nauseating lurch that sent me scrambling for the bathroom. I retched over the toilet, my body convulsing with dry, painful heaves.
I pushed myself up, clinging to the marble vanity. My reflection was a stranger—a pale, hollow-eyed ghost. My gaze drifted to the corner of the counter.
A small, brown prescription bottle. My prenatal vitamins.
The whisper from earlier came roaring back.
The ones Aiden, in a show of touching solicitude, had started bringing to me every morning. For the last month, he had insisted on opening it himself, shaking a single pill into his palm, and handing it to me. I'd thought it was an act of loving care.
Loving care. From a man who just gave away our baby's crib without a second thought.
A cold dread, sharp and terrifying, snaked up my spine.
My hand, shaking uncontrollably, reached for the bottle. I unscrewed the cap. Under the bathroom's harsh light, I saw it clearly for the first time.
The foil seal underneath had been peeled back with surgical precision and then pressed down. The edges were just slightly wrinkled. Tampered with, carefully, by someone who knew what he was doing.
I could almost feel his fingers on the foil. The same fingers that had stroked my hair while I slept. The same fingers that had handed me the pill this morning, waiting until I swallowed before kissing my forehead and walking away.
I shook a few of the pills into my palm. Under the light, the color seemed a fraction of a shade off. The texture wasn't as smooth as it should be. And there—a faint score line ran across the middle of each tablet. A line that shouldn't have been there.
I'm a surgeon. I know drugs. I know what pharmaceutical-grade supplements look like. These weren't right.
A hypothesis, so monstrous it was unthinkable, formed in the clinical part of my brain.
I didn't stop for shoes. In pajamas and slippers, I grabbed my keys and the bottle and ran from the apartment. The cold night air was a shock against my skin.
I drove to the hospital, my mind a maelstrom. I burst into the on-call lab, startling the night-shift technician, a friend named Ben.
"Ben, I need a favor," I said, my voice ragged. "I need you to run a tox screen on these. Stat. Off the record."
I pushed the bottle across the counter. He saw the raw panic in my eyes and nodded without a word. He didn't know that what he was about to find would shatter everything that was left of my world.
