Chapter 3

Beside me, Sara sighed under her breath.

"After all these years, Mr. Sever still hasn't forgotten that only that one brand of stomach medicine works for Miss Pruitt."

"It's a foreign brand. The instructions are all in English, and the print is so tiny. I never even realized it was stomach medicine."

"But Mr. Sever remembers it better than anyone. Even after the two of them divorced, he still keeps it stocked at home. I suppose he still can't quite let her go."

I was the one who bought everything for this house. Sebastian rarely bothered with such small things.

That stomach medicine was the one thing he'd specifically asked me to buy.

I'd never thought much about it before. So this was the reason.

Realizing she'd said too much, Sara hurried to explain.

"Ma'am, please don't take it to heart. I was just talking nonsense."

"It's not that I didn't want to speak up for you about the miscarriage earlier. It's just that Mr. Sever has always cared so much about Miss Pruitt's feelings, and I didn't dare contradict her to her face..."

"Since Mr. Sever married you, he must love you too..."

I looked in silence at the cluttered table.

The truth was, besides that bottle of folic acid, there were two other pill boxes.

Their labels were marked plainly, unmistakably: For patients with depression.

And folic acid, besides aiding conception, also helped as a supplement in treating depression.

Yet Sebastian looked right past them. Or maybe he saw them and simply didn't care.

As I passed the children's room, Tania's voice drifted out from inside, talking with him.

"See, I told you. A stepmother would never truly love Nina. How long has she even been in this house? And she's already learned to frame a child."

"I heard her arguing with you. This is the girl you like? When did your taste sink this low?"

Sebastian's tone turned cool.

"It's not a matter of liking her. Back then you were always dumping Nina on me, and I was too busy."

"Shelagh is gentle, devoted to the home, knows her limits, and she was Nina's teacher at preschool, so she knows how to care for a child. She was a very suitable choice. If I'd known it would blow up into something like today, I'd have been better off staying single."

So it had only ever been about being suitable.

I pulled my lips into a bitter curl and walked straight back to the bedroom.

Honestly, when they diagnosed me with mild depression, I'd been surprised too.

All I knew was that I hadn't been happy in a very long time.

My chest always felt like there was a stone lodged in it, making it hard to breathe.

But when the doctor asked when it had started, I couldn't answer.

Was it when Sebastian promised to make up for the honeymoon we'd missed, only to leave me stranded alone at a foreign airport again while he ran off to join Tania on a family trip?

Or was it when he heard I wanted a child, and the next day handed me a box of long-term birth control pills and told me to wait a little longer?

It didn't matter anymore.

Since no one cared about how I felt, at the very least I could learn to love myself.

I sent a message to a lawyer.

"Could you please draw up a divorce agreement for me? Thank you."

I set down my phone, and the bedroom door was pushed gently open.

Nina crept inside.

She looked at my stomach and said in a small voice, "I secretly asked Sara just now. She said the little baby in your tummy is gone, that you bled a lot."

"But I only wanted it to disappear. Mommy said... I didn't know you'd fall down the stairs. I really didn't."

"Teacher Cooley, can we still be secret-sharing best friends? I have another secret now. If you want to hear it, I can stay."

I had never once asked Nina to call me Mommy.

Because no one's mother can ever be replaced.

Afraid she'd close herself off because of her parents' divorce, I'd always cared for her and cherished her as a friend.

She, too, had curled up in my arms many times, trading me the secrets she wouldn't tell Sebastian or Tania.

And she was the first person to know I was pregnant, and that I was afraid of the horror doll.