My husband forgot to hang up, and I heard him tell my pregnant best friend, “Just wait until her father’s check clears, then we’ll take the baby and leave her with nothing.”
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The Bluetooth in my car is usually a convenience, a way to handle business while navigating the evening traffic of Seattle. But on that rainy Tuesday, it became the instrument of my destruction.
I had called Richard, my husband of fifteen years, just to tell him I was coming home early from my mother’s house. He answered with that breathless, hurried tone he always used when he claimed to be in the middle of a crucial negotiation. He said he loved me. He said he was wrapping up. And then he thought he hung up.
But he didn’t.
The connection stayed open. The silence on the line lasted only a second before the static cleared and his voice came through the speakers—not the gentle, loving voice he used with me, but a lower, more arrogant tone.
“God, she is so suffocating,” Richard said. The clarity was terrifying. It sounded like he was sitting in the passenger seat next to me. “I almost slipped up and called her by your name.”
My hands tightened on the leather steering wheel. I checked the screen. The call timer was still ticking. I opened my mouth to shout, to say, “Richard, I’m still here.”
But then a woman’s voice answered him. A voice I knew better than my own sister’s.
“You better not.” The woman laughed, a throaty, familiar sound. “I don’t want my son confused about who his real family is.”
It was Monica—my best friend. The woman I had known since college. The woman who sat at my kitchen island every Sunday drinking herbal tea.
I didn’t scream. I didn’t breathe. I just merged into the slow lane, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs.
“Don’t worry, babe,” Richard said. “Laura is clueless. She lives in that fairy tale world her daddy built for her. She thinks I’m grinding away at the office to build our future. I’m tired of waiting.”
“Richard,” Monica whined. “Look at me. I’m six months pregnant. I can’t keep hiding inside those hideous oversized sweaters Laura buys me. It’s humiliating pretending this baby is some accident from a guy who ran off.”
“Just wait.” Richard’s voice turned cold, calculating. “Just wait until her father’s check clears. You know the trust fund distribution is next month. Five million. Monica, that’s our ticket. Once that money hits our joint account, I transfer it to the offshore shell, serve her the divorce papers, and we are gone. We’ll take the baby and leave her with nothing but her empty house and her dried-up womb.”
I felt the blood drain from my face. The world outside my windshield blurred.
Dried-up womb.
The cruelest insult he could possibly throw. He knew how many rounds of IVF we had tried. He knew how many nights I had cried in his arms after another miscarriage. He knew I blamed myself.
“She’s too old to give me a son anyway,” Richard continued, twisting the knife. “She’s barren, Monica. You’re giving me the legacy she never could.”
Then came a sound that nearly caused me to drive off the bridge—a rhythmic swooshing sound.
Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh.“Listen to that,” Monica cooed. “That’s your son’s heartbeat. Strong, unlike hers.”
They were at the OB-GYN appointment. The appointment Monica had told me she was going to alone because she was so scared and lonely. She had even asked me for money for the co-pay yesterday.
I was shaking so violently the car swerved slightly, earning a honk from a passing truck. I pulled over onto the wet shoulder of the highway, my hazard lights blinking in the gloom. I sat there, paralyzed, listening to my husband and my best friend kiss. I heard the wet, smacking sound of their lips, the murmur of affection I hadn’t received in years.
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