Chapter 1

My husband Grant Mason was the coldly efficient type, and nothing disgusted him more than pointless emotional drain.

For the company he'd built with his own hands, he laid down one iron rule: no office romances.

To help him keep up appearances, I stayed secretly married and carried our child for seven months.

At the company, only his secretary, Nora Henson, knew about us.

The morning sickness during my pregnancy was violent.

Everything but my swollen belly wasted away, thinner by the day.

He handed me a medical journal, flat as ever.

"The clinical data proves morning sickness is a normal hormonal change. What you're doing, blowing it out of proportion, is pure self-suggestion."

"Can't you learn something from Secretary Henson? Stop acting like a giant baby fishing for sympathy."

Then I got the report. Late-stage stomach cancer. Immediate termination of the pregnancy advised.

I'd just come back to the company to get him to sign it when I saw my husband, the man who always followed the rules, rushing into the elevator with Secretary Henson in his arms.

Secretary Henson gave an embarrassed little pout.

"It's just gastroenteritis, my legs are fine! Mr. Mason, aren't you afraid people will get the wrong idea?"

Grant's brows drew together.

"Stomach trouble is no small thing. Rules are made by people too."

In that moment, I swallowed the blood rising in my throat and slipped the diagnosis back into my bag.

That night, I tucked the Special Medical Treatment Spousal Informed Consent Form into the divorce papers and handed them all to him together.

He assumed I was using divorce to threaten him into going public with us again.

He didn't even look. He just signed his name on the documents, impatient.

"Penelope Larson, don't regret this. You brought it on yourself."

Looking at that signature pressed hard enough to score the page, I suddenly didn't want to explain anymore.

Since my life, my child, and my pain were nothing to you but a nuisance.

Then never mind.

With the little time I had left, I would disappear from your world completely.

......

After Grant finished signing, I didn't say another word. I put the documents into my bag, went back to the bedroom, and closed the door.

In the living room he was busy with a conference call, his voice coming through the gap under the door until very late.

At six the next morning, before I shouldered my bag and left, he still hadn't woken.

I stood in the entryway and looked toward the bedroom, then pulled the door open and left.

The obstetrics ward was on the seventh floor.

The nurse took my paperwork, her eyes catching on my belly.

"No family with you? You're pretty far along, and with your condition being what it is, the risk is very high."

"My husband already signed." I smiled a little. "He's busy."

The attending physician was named James, in his fifties, his eyes on the lab results the whole time he spoke.

"Ms. Larson, I have to be clear with you. You weigh only seventy-eight pounds right now, and the stomach tumor has already spread into your abdominal cavity. There's also—"

He pushed the ultrasound sheet across to me.

"The fetus stopped developing at around twenty weeks. Because your body's functions have been failing, it was never expelled naturally."

I stared at him, stunned.

"What? The baby was already gone two months ago?"

He nodded.

"Ms. Larson, you have to understand your own condition first. A body that's malnourished, with a disease this serious, cannot carry a child."

"Right now we have to terminate the pregnancy and stabilize your vitals before we can even talk about a cancer treatment plan."

For nearly two months, I'd vomited so badly I couldn't get out of bed.

And because Grant thought my frequent early hospital visits were just self-suggestion, I'd missed two prenatal checkups.

So it turned out my child had died quietly, without a sound, long ago.

Early in the pregnancy I'd had stomach pains often, and the checkup doctor had written on the sheet that I should have an endoscopy.

Grant had said,

"As long as the prenatal numbers are normal, that's enough. Stop imagining problems and wasting time and energy."

Five months in, I once brought it up with my husband.

"Grant, why can't I feel the baby moving?"

His eyes on the meeting notes Nora Henson had just sent to his phone, he answered offhand,

"Fetal movement varies from person to person anyway. Don't manufacture anxiety out of your own subjective feelings."

Back then I'd felt a little embarrassed, wondering if I was being oversensitive again.

He'd always been more rational than me, always knew more.

In all our years together, every time he disagreed with something, he could produce papers and data to prove I was wrong.

Wrong often enough, I stopped trusting my own judgment.

At three in the afternoon, the nurse wheeled in the pre-op cart.

"Ms. Larson, it's time to go into the induced-labor room. Are you sure you don't want to notify your family?"

I looked up at the light in the ceiling, then picked up my phone and dialed my mother's number.

Her end was loud, oil crackling in the pan.

I heard someone placing an order.

"Two breakfast sandwiches and a coffee."

Mom asked in a rush,

"Penelope? What's wrong?"

I spoke carefully.

"Mom, I want to come home."

Her end went quiet for a second, then she lowered her voice.

"Did you fight with Grant again? Penelope, stop being so willful, don't get in the way of his work."

"You marrying him was the luckiest thing that ever happened to this family. Don't ruin a good life over nothing."

When I heard my mother's words, I understood.

At twenty-seven, I had nowhere to go back to.

My mother had spent her whole life giving in.

And she'd raised me the same way, that in a marriage a woman should swallow her pride and bear it all.

She truly believed that was love.

"Okay. I understand."

I hung up and shook my head at the nurse.

"No family is coming."

I laid my hand on my belly.

"Baby, I'm sorry."