The first injection went into my stomach on a Tuesday.
I sat on the edge of the cot in my utility room, the needle in my hand, the alcohol swab going cold on my skin. The nurse had shown me how. Pinch the flesh. Angle down. Push slow. My hand shook the first time, and I missed the spot, and a bruise bloomed like spilled ink under my belly button before the medicine even hit.
I didn't cry. I'd stopped that a long time ago.
By the fifth day, my stomach was a map of purple stars. My ovaries felt swollen and heavy, like two hot stones sewn under my skin. I threw up in the kitchen sink at 4 a.m. so no one would hear the toilet flush. I mopped it clean before Nolan came down for coffee. He walked past me without looking, phone pressed to his ear, laughing at something Braelyn had said.
The retrieval was worse.
I woke up in Dr. Webb's recovery room with a heating pad on my abdomen and a taste like metal in my mouth. No one came to pick me up. I took a cab back to the penthouse and crawled into my utility room, still in the thin paper gown they'd given me. I lay there for three days. The bare bulb above my head never turned off. I couldn't reach the switch.
On the fourth day, Nolan opened the door.
He didn't step inside. He never did. He just stood in the frame, backlit by the kitchen light, so I couldn't see his face.
"Webb called," he said. "The cycle failed."
I turned my head on the pillow. My lips were cracked. "I'm sorry."
He let the silence stretch. Then, slow, deliberate, he shook his head once. Just once. Like a man disappointed by a bad investment.
"I'd hoped you'd be good for something."
Behind him, Kyle's voice floated in from the kitchen, too loud to be accidental. "Maybe her body knows she doesn't deserve to be a mother."
Nolan didn't laugh. He didn't defend me either. He just pulled the door shut, and the click of the latch was softer than a whisper, and somehow it hurt more than if he'd slammed it.
I pressed my palm against my swollen stomach and thought about the vase in the corner, the pieces I'd glued back together with hands that had trembled just like this. Cracked. Sealed. Still standing.
Still standing.
The charity gala came the following week.
Nolan had a black dress delivered. Cheap fabric, no tags, off-the-rack. Braelyn's dress that same night cost more than my father's second mortgage. I saw the price on a card left on the foyer table. Someone had wanted me to see it.
At the coat check, Kyle appeared at my shoulder like something out of a nightmare. He leaned close enough that I could smell the bourbon on his breath.
"Enjoy the champagne, sweetheart," he murmured. "Enjoy the flashbulbs. Enjoy every second of pretending you belong here. Because Nolan's already picking out the next one."
I kept my eyes on the coat-check girl's hands. Counted the buttons on her blouse. One, two, three.
"He'll trade you in before Christmas," Kyle said. "You know that, right?"
I knew.
The business dinner was three nights later. A private room at some steakhouse in Midtown. I wore the only dress I owned that hadn't been picked apart by Nolan's stylist — a navy sheath I'd found at a thrift store on Second Avenue for eleven dollars. I'd steamed it in the bathroom. I'd sewn a loose seam by the hem.
Kyle sat across from me. He waited until the entrées came. Then he reached for the wine, and his hand slipped — carefully, theatrically — and half a bottle of Cabernet emptied across my lap.
"Oh, Lainey," he said, eyes wide with fake apology. "Clumsy of me."
The stain spread black across the navy. I could feel it soaking through to my thighs. Cold, and then warm.
I stood up. I said, "Excuse me."
I walked to the bathroom, and behind me I heard Kyle laugh, and I heard Nolan say nothing at all. I heard him lift his glass. I heard the ice shift. That was all he gave me. Ice.
In the bathroom mirror, I scrubbed at the stain with a wet paper towel until my hands were pink and the fabric was pinker, and I thought: this is what he wanted me to see. That his silence is a hand on Kyle's shoulder. That his silence is the signature on every bruise.
I came home that night and I started my rituals.
Every Sunday after that, I walked the forty blocks to St. Patrick's Cathedral. I couldn't afford the subway some weeks. Inside, the air smelled like beeswax and old stone, and my footsteps echoed on the marble like I was the only living thing in there. I lit a candle. I bought a prayer bracelet from the little stand near the gift shop. Woven cord, a small silver medal, blessed by a priest whose name I never learned.
Each one inscribed the same: Keep him safe. Give him peace. Year after year, in good health.
I hid them in a shoebox under my cot. One. Then two. Then three.
At night, when the penthouse went quiet, I wrote him letters I would never send.
Dear Lan,
I hope you ate today. I hope you slept. I hope the winter isn't too hard on your knee, the one you hurt playing pickup basketball our sophomore year.
I love you. I'm sorry. Please be happy.
And every morning, before the sun came up, I pulled the thin silver ring from its chain against my collarbone. I polished it with the corner of my pillowcase. Our initials, faint now, worn smooth by three years of my thumb passing over them in the dark.
He had forgotten it existed.
I never would.
