Chapter 2

It was past two in the morning when Winston came home, bailed out by someone, and started knocking.

Outside the door he shouted over and over that he wouldn't divorce, even smashed the glass, and then forced his way in carrying that gardenia perfume that only ever came off Eudora.

"Lauren, I'm sorry. This time it really was my fault. Please forgive me." His body, reeking of liquor, reached for me, and he tried to pull me into his arms.

He had no idea that the heavy perfume on him only made me sick to my stomach.

I caught those groping hands of his and threatened to call the police.

The moment he felt me refuse him, his attitude soured.

Winston's brows drew together again.

"Lauren, what exactly are you trying to say?"

"I know pregnancy is hard, that your moods swing, and I can understand that. But you can't let a little thing, a few words, turn you paranoid like this. It isn't good for you, and it isn't good for the baby."

The baby.

Those two words were like a thin needle, sinking straight into my heart.

Ten months ago, the day I learned I was pregnant, I could hardly contain my excitement. Every single day after that, I waited so carefully for this new life to be born.

But once Winston's mind was entirely on his ex-girlfriend.

His replies grew fewer, his messages shorter.

Until the day I told him I was pregnant, and I noticed he became happy, even answered me more than usual.

And yet something in me turned uneasy.

I clung to him, asking again and again whether he loved me.

He never said the word "love," but he did answer gently enough, "I'll come home early."

Until this time, my due date, when Winston lied and told me he was coming to pick me up.

And instead let me endure over an hour of pain, until my water broke and the baby, not saved in time, suffocated and died.

Only then did I understand.

From beginning to end, he had never held me in his heart.

Still, it was fine. It was over.

I couldn't love him anymore.

Seeing me stay silent, he must have thought I'd softened. He came over to me, bent down, and tried to hold me.

"All right, stop overthinking it. I had Daisy James make you some soup. Drink a little and get some rest, and tomorrow's the weekend, I'll take you for another checkup and we'll see…"

"Our baby is already dead."

I said it very quietly, looking at him with no expression at all.

He went rigid all over.

His arms still held that half-embrace, frozen in midair.

The living room was quiet enough to hear the ticking of the clock on the wall.

One tick, two, three.

Then he straightened, stared down at my belly, and for the longest time didn't understand.

"You're saying, the baby's gone?"

I lifted my head, met his eyes, and said it word by word:

"I'm saying, the baby's gone."

"After I sent you that voice message and you didn't answer, I called for an ambulance. By the time it came, the baby was already gone."

Winston's face went white, bit by bit.

Five years I'd known him, and I'd almost never seen him lose his composure.

In front of everyone he was always at ease, his moods as steady as a precision instrument.

But in this moment, that instrument broke down.

"Lauren, I'm sorry.."

His eyes suddenly went red. "Yesterday was Eudora's birthday too, she kept telling me to come over and have a drink with her…"

"Don't say any more."

I shook his hand off, calmly.

He had never been this low before me.

In the past, when we quarreled now and then, the most he ever did was go cold and silent and wait for me to be the one to back down.

In this moment, I suddenly laughed. "Winston, so it turns out you can hurt too? So it turns out your eyes can go red too? So it turns out you're capable of losing your composure too? And here I always thought you could only ever not care where I was concerned."

Winston went blank for a second, then dropped to his knees on the floor.

"I'm sorry, Lauren, I never thought…"

Right as Winston was apologizing with everything he had, the phone in his pocket rang.

He froze, glanced at the name on the screen, hesitated a long while, told me he was sorry, then turned and walked out of the room to answer it outside the door.

I could more or less guess who, at three in the morning, could matter this much to him.

He went outside to take the call, and faintly, from inside, I heard him soothing a crying girl, murmuring gently into the phone every so often, tender and sweet, exactly like when he and I had first fallen in love.

I let the tears fall and tried not to think about any of it anymore.

I didn't go back to the apartment either. I moved to a hotel nearby.