Chapter 1

While our daughter was being resuscitated, I called my husband twelve times.

Every call, he cut off.

Because that day, he was ringing the opening bell at the IPO, standing beside his business partner.

I begged him through my tears. "The doctor says she might not make it through the night. Come back and see her one last time."

He warned me, out of patience.

"Stop using our kid to pressure me. There are hundreds of people here waiting on me. I'll come back in half an hour."

But our daughter couldn't wait even that half hour.

The moment she stopped breathing, on the livestream my husband was embracing his business partner, thanking her for standing by him through the hardest ten years of his life.

When he finally reached the hospital, he grabbed me and told me to calm down.

"The child is already gone. Do you want to destroy this family too?"

I shook his hand off and threw the divorce papers at him.

"The one who destroyed this family was never me."

...

Percival James looked down at the pages scattered across the floor, his face terrifyingly dark.

"Kirsten Sullivan, do you know what you're doing?"

"I do."

I crouched down and picked up the divorce papers one by one, putting them back in order.

On the last page, I'd already signed my name.

The date was three months ago.

Percival stared at that date, and the anger in his eyes turned to shock.

"Three months ago?"

He snatched the papers from me and flipped to the page on dividing our assets.

I hadn't asked for his company, or for the big apartment downtown. I was only taking the savings I'd had before the marriage, and my own things.

The section on Nina's custody arrangements had once been written out in careful detail.

It was useless now.

Percival stared at it for a long time, his fingers slowly tightening.

"You've wanted to take Nina and leave me all along?"

I didn't answer.

The nurse pushed the door open, carrying the clothes Nina had been changed out of before the resuscitation.

A pink jacket, a white sweater, and one sneaker with its lace come undone.

When Nina left the house that morning, she'd complained that I'd bundled her up in too much.

She'd wrinkled her nose and bargained with me, saying that when her dad came home, she'd make him settle it.

But she'd never get to wait for that.

I reached out to take them, but Percival got there first and clutched the clothes to himself.

It was as though only in this moment did he finally understand that Nina was really gone.

"Before she went, did she say anything?"

His voice was badly hoarse.

I looked at him and didn't answer for Nina.

The last time Nina was awake, she had asked about her dad.

But she'd waited seven years, and been disappointed for seven years.

The last words she left behind shouldn't be used to ease Percival's guilt.

"Kirsten, I'm asking you a question."

"Didn't you hate it most when I used our kid to pressure you?"

I pulled the clothes out of his arms.

"It won't happen again."

Percival's body went rigid.

From the other end of the hallway came the rapid click of high heels.

Beulah Fox rushed in with Percival's assistant, still wearing the white suit from the bell-ringing.

The IPO commemorative badge was pinned to her chest, and in her hand she carried the coat Percival had left behind at the venue.

When she saw the clothes in my arms, she stopped dead.

"Nina, she..."

Percival closed his eyes and forced out the words.

"She's gone."

The color drained from Beulah's face in an instant.

She looked at me, her lips moving a few times before she managed to get out a sentence. "I'm sorry. I didn't know it was this serious. Percival only said the child was in the hospital again."

So it wasn't that he hadn't heard me.

He'd simply never taken anything I said seriously.