Chapter 2

Beulah moved to steady me. I turned aside and let her hand close on nothing.

It froze there in the air.

"Kirsten, I know you blame us right now. But that bell-ringing today involved too many people. Percival couldn't just walk out."

"So I didn't ask him to."

I held Nina's clothes against me and looked at her, calm.

"From today on, who he wants to be with, where he wants to go, none of it has anything to do with me."

Beulah started to explain again, and Percival cut in with a low growl. "Enough!"

His eyes were red as they turned to me.

"Nina just died. Do you really have to say all this here, now?"

Something in it struck me as almost funny.

When our daughter was alive, every time I brought her up, he called it me making a scene.

Now she was dead, and even ending our marriage, I was supposed to nurse his grief first.

"Then when am I supposed to say it?"

"After your IPO celebration wraps up? Or after you and Beulah finish giving your interviews?"

Beulah's face went stiff.

But Percival flinched as if I'd hit a raw nerve, and his voice shot up.

"Beulah and I are only partners! Today was the company going public, not me out on some date with her!"

"I know."

I had never once doubted whether they'd slept together.

What truly drove me to despair had never been an affair I could catch with evidence.

It was that every time a choice had to be made, he walked straight to Beulah and the company, then took it for granted that Nina and I would wait right where we were.

Beulah got his time, his trust, his explanations, his thanks.

Nina and I only ever got one line: "Wait a little longer."

Percival opened his mouth, and before he made a sound his phone rang.

The caller ID was the head of things over at the exchange.

He looked at the flashing screen and didn't answer.

Before, any work call, he never let it ring past three seconds.

But now, it was already too late.

"Answer it," I said.

Percival's head snapped toward me.

"Kirsten, I'm not as cold-blooded as you think."

"Aren't you?"

I took out my own phone and put those twelve rejected calls in front of him.

The shortest lasted only two seconds.

The longest was me crying, telling him the doctor said the family should prepare themselves.

That call ran forty-seven seconds.

He heard me out and answered with one line: "I don't have time for your hysterics right now."

Then he hung up.

Percival stared at the call log, the color draining from his face bit by bit.

"I thought... you just wanted me to come home."

"Yes. I just wanted you to come home."

My tears finally spilled over.

"Because your daughter was dying, and she wanted to see her father."

"But in your eyes, I didn't even have the right to make you come back and see our child one last time."

The hallway went completely silent.

Percival reached out to touch me. I stepped back and let his hand miss.

A nurse called me over to handle the paperwork.

I turned and followed her, and never looked back.