Chapter 1

My wife's one condition for marrying me was that we stay childfree.

On our seventh wedding anniversary, I had a surprise ready for her.

But when I opened her phone, I found a voice message from her childhood friend:

"Can you come over? The baby misses you."

I thought it was just some private joke between old friends, and I typed back:

"Stop it. Don't call each other that anymore."

His reply came through, confused:

"I mean our kid. He misses his mom. He's cried all day. Don't you miss him at all?"

1

It hit me like a bolt of lightning.

I couldn't believe it. I played the message again and again.

A kid?

Mom?

That was impossible.

Wasn't she the one who wanted to stay childfree her whole life?

Wasn't she the one who couldn't stand children?

I still remembered the only condition she gave me before we married:

"Antony Gilbert, even after we're married, let's not have kids, okay?"

"I've heard that giving birth is like walking through the gates of hell."

"And I've heard that once you have a kid, love, life, freedom, all of it is gone."

"I don't want to go through any of that."

"This is my one condition before marriage. It's my bottom line."

"I will never have a child!"

She'd said it so firmly back then.

After the wedding, there were times I saw other people holding their babies, and I couldn't hide the envy.

More than once I'd tried to talk her around.

But she held firm on staying childfree.

So now, what was this?

Where was all that resolve?

Her so-called principles and bottom line, were they only ever for me?

Even setting all of that aside.

Even forgetting her bottom line and her principles about staying childfree forever.

She was my wife.

The woman I'd protected for seven years.

And she'd had another man's child. What was I supposed to make of that?

I broke down and played the message over and over.

Terrified I'd heard it wrong, I even pinched myself.

Another voice message came from her childhood friend, Jack Simmons:

"Viola Henson, are you still there?"

"Why aren't you answering?"

"The baby really misses you."

"He won't stop crying, and I don't know what to do."

"Just come, okay? Maybe if he nurses he'll settle down."

"Didn't the doctor say formula's never the same as breast milk?"

"He only stops fussing when you're here."

Clack.

The phone slipped out of my hand and hit the floor.

In that instant.

The rage, the panic, the dread inside me came rushing in like a tide.

It nearly choked me.

When Viola came back into the room after her shower.

I was crouched in the corner.

She was toweling her hair.

Seven years had passed.

She was still as young and beautiful as ever.

As if time couldn't leave a single mark on her.

Yet there was another man.

A man who'd made her willingly cross her own bottom line and principles.

She saw me huddled in the corner and asked with a smile:

"What's this game all of a sudden?"

"You want to play hide-and-seek with me?"

"You're not really that childish, are you?"

I stared at her.

And the longer I looked, the more the tears fell on their own.

I still remembered the last time I'd cried.

It was at a bar.

Some bald guy wouldn't leave her alone, and I threw myself between them, grappling with him.

In the middle of the fight.

The bald guy's friend smashed a bottle and came at me with the broken glass.

It was Viola who threw herself in the way to take it for me.

Watching her covered in blood.

For the first time in my life, I felt real fear.

The tears fell on their own, onto her.

She reached up and touched my face, and in a weak voice she said to me:

"Promise me. If I'm ever gone, you have to be happy."

I held her tight, crying:

"Don't say stupid things. You're going to be fine."

"I'm going to love you, love you my whole life, love you fiercely, love you for all the lifetimes to come."

But now.

All those vows.

Had turned into one bitterly cruel joke.