The key still worked.
I stood in the hallway with my hand on the knob, listening to the silence on the other side. Part of me had expected the locks to be changed. Part of me had hoped for it. A clean severing. A door that wouldn't open.
But Vincent had never been clean about anything.
I turned the key. The door swung inward.
The apartment didn't smell like me anymore. That was the first thing. No coffee. No lavender soap. It smelled like something floral and expensive that I didn't recognize. I stepped inside and set my empty suitcase on the floor.
The walls were wrong.
Our framed photo from Cape Cod—the one where we were both sunburned and laughing—was gone. In its place hung a canvas print of Vincent and Paige on a beach I'd never seen, her hand on her belly, both of them barefoot and glowing. The bookshelf where I'd kept my research notebooks had been reorganized. My spines were shoved together on the bottom shelf. The rest was baby books. *What to Expect.* *The Happiest Baby on the Block.*
I walked toward the bedroom. My legs felt distant. Mechanical.
The bed had new sheets. White with a thin gray stripe. I used to keep blue ones. Egyptian cotton. Vincent said they felt like sleeping in a cloud.
I opened the dresser drawer where I used to keep my jewelry. My grandmother's pearl earrings were still there, tucked in the back corner beneath a tangle of Paige's gold chains. Overlooked. Or left on purpose. I picked them up. The pearls were cool and smooth against my palm.
"Still sniffing around?"
I turned.
Paige stood in the doorway. She was wearing a silk robe, cream-colored, tied loose at the waist. And at her throat—hanging just above her collarbones on a delicate gold chain—was the sapphire pendant.
Vincent's grandmother had shown it to me three years ago. Christmas Eve. She'd taken my hand across the dinner table and pressed the small velvet box into my palm. *For your wedding day,* she'd whispered. *It's been in the family since 1952.*
Paige's fingers drifted up to touch it. Casual. Deliberate.
"He doesn't want you," she said. Her voice was light. Conversational. "He hasn't wanted you for a long time."
I closed my hand around the earrings. I didn't answer.
I moved past her into the living room. My old coffee mug—the chipped one from the Columbia bookstore—was still in the cabinet. I wrapped it in a dish towel and set it in the suitcase. My winter scarf was in the hall closet. I folded it. Paige followed me.
"You know what's funny?" she said. She leaned against the wall, arms crossed, the sapphire catching the light every time she moved. "He told me about the appointment. Your little appointment next week."
My hands stilled on the scarf.
"At least you're smart enough to know no one wants a leftover baby."
I felt something crack behind my sternum. Small. Quiet. I kept folding.
"Did you really think he'd choose you?" Paige's voice dropped lower. Intimate. Almost kind. "You were gone for four years, Seraphina. Four years. He got tired of waiting for someone who cared more about pipettes than him."
I picked up my laptop charger from the side table. I coiled it carefully. My hands were shaking.
Paige stepped closer. "You should've seen his face when I told him I was pregnant. He cried. Happy tears. He said he'd been waiting his whole life to be a dad."
I zipped the suitcase. The sound was very loud.
"He never talked about you like that," Paige said. "Not once."
I straightened. I looked at her. She was smiling.
And then we both heard it.
The scrape of a key in the lock.
Paige's face changed. It happened fast. Her smile vanished. Her hand flew to her stomach. She staggered backward—one step, two—her mouth opening in a gasp that sounded almost real.
And then she dropped.
She hit the floor hard, right at my feet, her arms flailing out as if I'd shoved her. The sapphire pendant swung loose from her neck. Her scream was sharp and high and perfectly timed.
"Vincent!" she shrieked. "Vincent, help—"
The door slammed open.
Vincent stood in the doorway, his coat half off, his face pale. His eyes went to Paige on the floor. Then to me standing over her.
He didn't hesitate.
He didn't ask.
He moved.
His hands hit my shoulders. Hard. A full-body shove with all his weight behind it. I flew backward. My hip cracked against the edge of the kitchen island. Pain exploded white and hot. I crumpled.
The floor was cold against my cheek.
I heard Vincent drop to his knees beside Paige. "Are you okay? Did she hurt you? Is the baby—"
"I'm fine," Paige gasped. "I'm fine. She just—she came at me—"
I tried to push myself up. My hands slipped. There was something wet beneath me. Dark. Spreading.
I looked down.
Blood.
A lot of blood.
I turned my head. Vincent was still crouched over Paige, his back to me, his hand on her face. I opened my mouth.
"Vincent."
My voice came out thin. Distant.
He didn't turn.
"Vincent," I said again. Louder. The pain was climbing up my spine now, hot and sharp and wrong. "Vincent, I'm bleeding."
He froze.
Slowly—so slowly—he turned his head.
His eyes dropped to the floor. To the blood pooling beneath me. To my hands pressed against my stomach.
His face went gray.
"Seraphina—"
I looked at him. I felt very calm. Very far away.
"You just killed your own child," I whispered.
And then the world went dark.
