Chapter 4

I went home and packed up what was left.

The fertility journal I'd kept for two years, along with the silver ring, I dropped both into the trash.

Then I dragged my suitcase to the hospital.

The lights over the operating table were very bright.

I looked at my phone one last time.

Piper had just posted an update.

In the photo, Ethan stood in the kitchen in an apron, making a cake.

The frosting was smeared unevenly, and there was a little white on his face.

The caption read: Happy 22nd birthday to me. Thank you to my very own personal chef.

Twenty-two.

Young, all right.

I closed my eyes, and the tears slid down into my hair.

The year I turned twenty-two, Ethan and I were building the company, dead broke.

On my birthday he couldn't afford a cake, so the two of us crowded into that tiny apartment and forced a lopsided little cake out of the rice cooker, with eggs and flour.

He looked up at me, his eyes red. "From now on I'll celebrate your birthday every single year. I'll buy you the biggest cake."

"Serena Locke, I'll be good to you forever!"

The anesthesia took hold, and the world went dark.

In the haze, I was eighteen again.

The day my mother died, I knelt alone in the hallway of the funeral home, holding her urn, with nowhere to go.

Ethan crouched down and laid his hand over mine, his voice soft.

"I don't have parents either. Two people with no one to lean on—if we lean on each other, maybe things will get better."

At eighteen I gripped his hand hard, like the last piece of driftwood.

Ten years. And now, at last, I was letting go.

After the surgery, I walked out of the hospital with a pale face.

The anesthesia hadn't fully worn off. I braced myself against the wall and edged step by step to the curb, then raised my hand for a car.

My vision went black. I swayed and nearly went down.

A hand caught me. "Miss, are you all right?"

I shook my head and thanked him.

The night sky suddenly burst open, brilliant.

Fireworks over the whole city, golden rain everywhere.

Cluster by cluster, they spelled out a few words—

Piper, Happy 22nd Birthday

People on the sidewalk held up their phones, clicking their tongues.

"Who's this, throwing a party like that? Fireworks over the whole city for a birthday?"

"Rich-people romance! So jealous!"

"Come on, stop staring. They've got their kind of romance, we've got our BBQ skewers. Let's go, let's go."

I got in the car, leaned against the window, and looked at all that dazzle.

"Yeah," I said quietly. "It's beautiful."

In the haze I remembered a New Year's Eve years ago, when Ethan took the last of his money to the corner shop and came back with a box of sparklers.

The two of us stamped our feet on the rooftop in the cold while he lit them one by one, golden sparks scattering across the ground.

We chased each other back and forth, our laughter torn apart by the wind and flung everywhere.

How good it was back then. We had nothing, and yet we had everything.

At the airport, I traded in my boarding pass.

Right before takeoff, my phone buzzed.

A friend request popped up.

Ethan: Why aren't you back yet?

I stared at that line for a long time.

Then I turned off the screen and boarded the plane.

Ethan stared at the friend request that hadn't gone through, and frowned.

The apartment was pitch dark. No lights on.

"Serena?"

No answer.

He walked over to the coffee table. On top was a record from an abortion.

Beneath it was pressed a divorce agreement.

At the line for the wife's signature, a name was already written, in her handwriting.

Ethan's hand shook.

The surgery record slipped from his fingers and drifted to the floor.