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“Ah, this is no good.” He drops his head to my chest, kissing the valley between my breasts.
I run my fingers through his silken hair, dread filling me. “It’s not? Do you want me to ...?”
“No, you’re good. Shit, you’reperfect.” He is still inside me. “What I mean by this is no good, is that it’stoogood. Way too good. I’m about to come, and I’m two thrusts in. I’ve never ...” He raises his head, and he is thoroughly blushing. What a wonder. “Never without a condom.”
“Oh.” Relief washes over me, and I hug him tighter, moving underneath him, rolling my hips, making him go crazy. “Come whenever you want. I’m close too.”
“God, Winnifred. You’re so sweet, even when you’re killing me.”
We find our rhythm. It’s fast and intense. Urgent and needy. When he comes inside me, I stifle a cry it feels so good.
He stays over afterward. Sleeps in the bed Paul and I once shared. Or, rather, lies in Paul’s spot. Taller and larger in frame. His dark eyes watching me, instead of those sunshine baby blues I’ve been used to seeing from across the pillow.
There is very little sleep involved on our last night together. We have sex, then we pull away, talk a little. His arm is draped over me in a possessive gesture I’ll miss. And then he is inside me again, kissing, biting, moaning. Sometimes we fuse together before we even finish a conversation. We’re a jumbled, delicious mess.
When the sun rises, I’m dead to the world. The good kind of exhaustion takes over me. My bones feel heavy, and I’m lulled into a deep sleep. When I wake up, the clock says 11:20 a.m., and Arsène is nowhere in sight. I peel myself off a bed that smells like a stranger and make my way to the kitchen. Half-exhilarated after the night I’ve had, half-devastated that this is the end.
There’s a note waiting for me, stuck on the coffee machine, where he knows I will see it. It’s his parting gift. His white flag.
Call the doctor.
—A.
And so I do.
I call my OB-GYN. This time, I don’t hang up. I don’t let panic take over me. The receptionist announces cheerfully that they actually have an opening tomorrow, at around noon. I take it with both hands and thank her approximately five hundred times.
Before she ends the call, the receptionist reminds me to bring my insurance card, along with a photo ID. After I hang up, I rummage through my wallet. I can’t find the darn insurance card. It’s been a hot minute since I took care of myself, having spent the majority of this past year in deep hibernation.
Then I remember that Paul put our insurance cards, along with our passports, birth certificates, and social security cards, in the safe in his closet.
I walk over to our room, ignoring the mangled sheets, and open Paul’s closet. The safe stares back at me. I don’t have the combination for it. Paul didn’t share it with me. I never thought much of it at the time. Trust hadn’t been an issue in our marriage—or so I thought.
My extensive knowledge of movies reminds me I have only three tries before the safe self-locks. I rack my brain for what the code may be.
I try his birthdate first. Fail.
I try my birthday, letting out a wry chuckle when the light blinks red. No surprises there.
My Spidey senses tell me it has to be a birthday. It must. Paul lacked the creativity to come up with any other combination. He always used birthdates. I used to make fun of him about it. His Gmail, Facebook, Instagram passwords ... all birthdates. Usually his own. He didn’t remember his parents’ birthdays. He was sure about the months but never about the days. His secretary had to remind him a week in advance to buy presents and schedule a call on his calendar.
Which leaves me with one other person.
After making my way to Paul’s office, I power up his computer and log in to his company email, which is surprisingly still working. His name pops green on his company’s internal software. My heart beats hard in my chest.Oops.He’s online. Let’s hope no one thinks he’s back from the dead.
I scroll through his emails until I find what I need. A birthday sheet shared by a few of the PAs that includes all of Silver Arrow Capital employees and their birthdays.
I find Grace’s. January ninth. I make my way back to the safe, crack my knuckles, and hit the numbers 010991.
The green light flashes, and the safe slides open effortlessly. Nausea rolls through my stomach, the bile tickling the back of my throat. What a darn cheater the man was. I grab a stack of plastic cards wrapped in a rubber band from the safe’s jaws. Sort through them. Find the insurance card. I pocket it in my sweatpants with shaky hands, shoving the rest of the cards back. Something draws my attention just before I turn around to leave. A box, no bigger than a mug, in the corner of the safe.It is brown and plain. Months ago—weeks ago, even—I would have left it alone.
Now? I want to know. I grab it and flick it open. There’s a lot of scented black tissue covering whatever’s underneath. I toss the wrappers away, my heart pounding so loud I can feel its thuds between my ears. The first thing I see is a USB stick. The second thing is a piece of paper rolled like a map. No, a few pieces of paper. Square. White. I unroll the batch, and what I see stuns me.
No. No. No.
I gallop toward the bathroom, kneel in front of the toilet, and throw up, retching uncontrollably. Tears run down my face. My whole body is trembling.
Standing up on wobbly legs, I stumble back to the box, which is flung over the bed, and pick up the pictures again. Yes. It is exactly what I think it is. Ultrasound pictures, indicating a small little bean of a baby swimming safely inside its sack. I turn the picture to the other side.
