The words hit me like a blow to the skull.
Watching the color drain from my face, Hazel sneered from where she stood.
"When you get right down to it, you're just the mistress."
"That little bastard back then, even if you'd carried it to term, would've been nothing but an illegitimate child!"
Vincent snapped at her to shut up.
"Faith, I can promise you, what I feel for you now is real love. It's only because your health is so fragile that I did what I did with Hazel."
"Yes, I gave Hazel a marriage license, but to everyone out there, you're the one who's Mrs. Henson."
"If you don't like it, I can find the time to divorce her, and then we'll go get a new marriage license done, all right?"
Listening to Vincent coax me in that gentle voice, I couldn't help but laugh out loud.
"Vincent, it's been five years. If you wanted to divorce her, you had all the time in the world to divorce her in those five years, didn't you?"
"But no, you kept lying to me instead, kept sneaking around with her behind my back, even while I was up on the mountain praying for our child. Vincent, you say you love me? Is this what your love looks like?"
I turned away sobbing and started for the door, and Vincent came after me, shouting my name at my back.
"Faith Sullivan! If you dare walk out, I'll smash it!"
I stopped. In Vincent's hands was the urn holding our unborn child.
That child had lived six months inside me, already formed. A boy.
Back then I'd been so full of hope, buying stacks of baby things to welcome him.
After it happened, I burned all of it, and put the ashes together in this small urn.
I'd set up a memorial tablet for that little urn, wanting only for him to rest easy and free of worry in the next life.
And now Vincent was holding that urn to threaten me.
"Vincent, put him down."
"Come back, and I'll put it down."
Vincent looked at me, certainty all over his face.
He had me. I reached out to take the urn.
"Be good," Vincent said. "From now on we'll go back to how it used to be, going up to the chapel to pray for her, all right?"
I said nothing. And in that moment Hazel screamed behind him and tumbled down the stairs.
Vincent spun around almost instantly, so fast that the little urn in his hands dropped to the floor with a thud.
I watched the box shatter and crumpled to the ground.
There had only been a little bit of ash inside, and it scattered across the floor.
And then Vincent came rushing over with Hazel in his arms, and without even a glance he kicked the broken urn out of his way.
"Vincent!"
I screamed his name, breaking apart, and he turned back, his face full of fury.
"Hazel just fell down the stairs. Can you stop making a scene?"
Hazel hid against his chest, watching me with a taunt in her eyes.
Vincent went on, "Hazel's ankle is swollen. She's spent all these years living in a school up in the mountains, she's suffered enough. If you want a child, I'll bring in the best doctors to get your body back in shape!"
"But right now, stop using a dead embryo to make trouble for us!"
With that he carried Hazel off, and they were gone.
Only then did it dawn on me. When the charity elementary school was finished, I'd gone to see it, and there was a small building out back. I'd asked Vincent what it was, and he'd said offhandedly that it was housing for the teachers.
Thinking about it now, that must have been where Hazel was hiding.
So it turned out the charity elementary school Vincent funded was nothing more than a place to keep Hazel tucked away too.
I struggled to my feet, and only then did I notice the fierce pain low in my belly, my skirt soaked with blood. The next second the front door was shoved open, and a tall figure rushed in calling my name and lifted me up in a panic.
"Julian…"
My mind a blur, I leaned into the man's solid chest and passed out completely.
