Chapter 2

She found out she was pregnant three weeks after the divorce.

At first it was just the sleepiness, and the way the smell of cooking oil turned her stomach. Rosalie chalked it up to the move wearing her out, plus the knots of misery in her chest making her gut act up.

Then one day at the office, she caught the smell of braised pork belly from a coworker's lunch, bolted for the bathroom, and threw up until the world went black, until she was practically bringing up bile.

As a grown woman, her stomach dropped. She had a bad feeling.

She bought three pregnancy tests, all different brands.

The results agreed perfectly. Six red lines, so bright they stung her eyes.

The day she went to the hospital, she made a point of booking Silas Swanson's slot.

Silas was Drew Gilbert's childhood friend, and the only doctor in their circle. He was a male OB-GYN, but his skill ranked among the best in the city.

When he saw Rosalie, Silas was in the middle of drinking his herbal tea, and sprayed a mouthful straight out.

"Rosalie? What are you doing here? What's wrong?"

She said nothing, just quietly handed over her appointment slip.

Silas glanced at it, his expression shifting, the usual grin gone.

"Does Drew know?"

Rosalie shook her head, her voice thin as a mosquito's hum. "Don't tell him. We're already divorced."

Silas sighed, gave her a complicated look, and asked nothing more. He wrote her up for an ultrasound.

When the results came, Silas stared at the screen for a long time, his brow knotted tight enough to crush a fly.

Rosalie's heart climbed into her throat. "What is it? Is the baby... is something wrong?"

She hadn't decided whether she wanted this baby, but some instinctive maternal fear gripped her all the same.

Silas turned, took off his glasses and wiped them, his tone odd. "Rosalie, with luck like yours, it's a shame you don't buy lottery tickets."

"What do you mean?"

"It's not one. It's three."

He pointed to the three blurry little dark spots on the screen. "Triplets. Every marker looks perfectly normal so far. Their vitality is... very strong."

Something in Rosalie's head went off with a roar, and everything blanked out.

Triplets?

Not even a soap opera would dare pull this.

Before, if this had happened before the divorce, what a wonderful thing it would have been.

Drew always said he didn't like loud children, but Rosalie had seen the way he looked at other people's kids. That was a tenderness he couldn't hide.

He'd even hidden a copy of The New Dad's Guide to Parenting in his study.

But now, these three little lives had become the cruelest joke of all.

"Silas," Rosalie asked, her voice trembling, "what if... I don't want them?"

Silas froze, his pen stalling.

"Rosalie, you need to think this through. Triplets are rare to begin with, and at your age, with your constitution, if you lose them this time, you might never conceive again."

"And," Silas paused, his tone turning grave, "these are three lives, after all. They're Drew's flesh and blood too. Divorced or not, he has a right to know."

"He doesn't need a right to know!"

Rosalie flared all at once, tears spilling over. "He said he never wanted children! He said children were a burden! We're divorced, and I don't want anything more to do with him!"

Silas watched her come apart, quietly held out a tissue, and said nothing more.

But under the desk, his hand had already slipped out his phone.