04
The baby's face had gone blue from crying so long without air.
I held him tight against me, straining to feel his heartbeat.
The tiny body twitched once in my arms and let out a whimper.
I sat there on the floor. Outside, the rain kept falling.
I pulled out my phone.
One unread message. Bruce, just now: "Home yet?"
I pressed the screen dark.
His small hand had a fistful of my collar, as if he were afraid I'd leave again.
By the time he finally slept, I was wrung out to nothing.
Outside, the sky was turning gray with dawn.
The ache in my left breast still hadn't eased.
I opened my social media feed.
Amber's post sat right at the top.
"A new little addition to the family."
The photo was a pregnancy test. Two lines.
And below it, a comment from Bruce:
"All these years, I'll always be your rock."
The location tag was the hospital I'd gone to tonight.
I started laughing then, no sound at all, laughing until the tears ran down my cheeks.
Amber was pregnant. With my husband's child.
It was so absurd it was funny.
All at once I understood why he'd been waiting outside the maternity ward tonight,
why he'd hovered at the door of the ultrasound room, words caught in his throat.
Amber was inside.
He hadn't been looking for me, not once, from beginning to end.
The person he was waiting for had always been Amber.
Fine. Let the marriage end.
I opened the suitcase and packed up my things and the baby's.
Then I called Mr. Finch.
"The signed offer confirmation is already back in your inbox."
I hesitated, then said it: "Could you lend me two hundred dollars first? I want to take my son and leave Bruce."
Mr. Finch was one of the few people at the company who knew about Bruce and me.
Three seconds of silence on the line.
"Lend you... two hundred? Trudy, the investment calls you used to make were measured in the hundreds of millions."
There was a smile in his voice.
I gave a bitter one back. "Married the wrong man. Believed the wrong words."
He laughed softly. "All right. I've advanced your first month's salary. Get your strength back, and come in whenever you're ready."
My phone chimed. A hundred thousand dollars, credited to my account.
The second Mr. Finch hung up, it rang again. Bruce.
"Trudy, the company just told me they're firing me."
He sounded frantic.
"You used to be close with Mr. Finch and the rest of them. Find out for me what's going on. I still need this job to support you and our daughter."
To support Amber and her baby, more like.
Because — I looked at my luggage.
The clothes: bargain-bin stuff, twenty-one dollars a piece.
The formula: near-expiry cans, fifty-one apiece.
I'd seen his shopping history once. All that Burberry, all that Chanel.
I'd thought it was a surprise for me.
Then I met Amber, standing polished and radiant at Bruce's mother side,
and I finally understood that none of those clothes had ever been mine.
Neither had Bruce.
I gave a cold little laugh. "Any chance they're firing you for your personal conduct?"
He caught the jab, but he didn't dare turn on me right now.
"Stop it. I hear the termination letter's just missing the CFO's signature. Go ask, quick, find out who took your position."
I looked at the termination letter that had just come through the fax.
He was right. It was only missing the CFO's signature.
I hung up, gathered my son, and walked out without looking back.
This time, I called for an Uber.
Bruce drove home in a foul mood, foot flat to the floor the whole way.
The moment he stepped inside, his mother came running out of the bedroom.
"Bruce, Trudy and the baby are both gone!"
His stomach dropped.
She handed him an envelope. On the front it read: To Bruce Delgado.
