A psychic once told me that Patrick was destined to stray. From that day forward, my stepsister, Lacey, waged open warfare against him. When he logged into his online games, she paid dozens of freelance players to infiltrate his lobbies and keep an eye on him. When he traveled for business, she shadowed his flights in sunglasses and oversized coats, snapping photos of every woman who walked within three feet of him and demanding that I break things off. Before he was allowed to take me out to dinner, she would trap him in the foyer, grilling him to recite eighteen distinct reasons why he loved me. Patrick took it all without a single complaint. He slipped an engagement ring—bought with six grueling months of his salary—onto my finger, looked Lacey dead in the eye, and said, “Just because your ex-husband stepped out on you doesn’t mean you get to poison what Willa and I have.” Lacey crossed her arms, her jaw tight, and offered only a sharp, icy scoff. I lived between the two of them with a persistent ache behind my temples, constantly searching for a way to broker peace. Then Lacey finalized her divorce, found out she was pregnant, and I told her to pack her bags and move in with us. When she arrived at our door, Patrick reached for her suitcase before I could even take a step. He looked down at her slight bump with a mocking edge. “Look at you. Spent years treating me like dirt, and now look who’s taking care of you.” Lacey puffed her cheeks, firing back instantly. “Nobody asked for your help. I came here for my sister.” I stood on the hardwood floor just behind them, my mouth parting, but no words came out. In that quiet, fleeting second, a cold realization settled into the marrow of my bones. Without ever noticing when or how the shift had happened, I had become a stranger in my own home. … Lacey lingered in the entryway. Her stomach barely showed through her oversized sweater, yet she kept one hand planted firmly against the curve of her lower back, playing the part. She didn’t utter a single request, but Patrick was already kneeling, placing a pair of brand-new, cloud-soft slippers right at her feet. They were the slippers he had bought for me only yesterday. I hadn’t even had the chance to unbox them yet, still padding around in the scuffed, worn slides I’d brought with me when we first moved into this apartment. Lacey gave a little pout. “What was wrong with my old ones? Why’d you have to buy new ones?” Patrick sighed, though his tone was entirely devoid of irritation. “You’re pregnant now. Try to take care of yourself for once.” Lacey cut him a sidelong glance, then reached out and linked her arm through mine, pulling me toward the dining room. The moment her eyes landed on the spread covering the table, her face lit up. “I didn’t even say I was coming over today! How did you know to make all my favorites?” She pulled out a chair and slumped into it, waving a hand toward the kitchen island with easy authority. “Patrick. Bowl of soup. Now.” “You’re pregnant, Lacey, not paralyzed,” he scoffed. But he picked up the ladle anyway, scooping a rich portion into a ceramic bowl and setting it gently in front of her. “I swear, this baby ate whatever was left of your brain. Did you forget you posted on your feed last night?” “You saw that? I posted that at three in the morning.” Listening to the smooth, effortless rhythm of their banter, a dull numbness crept into my legs. So that was why Patrick had been up at dawn chopping vegetables and simmering broth. It wasn’t because he had remembered today was our wedding anniversary. I reached into my pocket, pulling out my phone to check Lacey’s social media. Her profile was blank—a single, clean grey line cutting across the screen, blocking me from viewing her updates. I remembered then. Right after she graduated from college, she had announced that she was an adult entitled to her own privacy, quietly locking me out of her digital life. She had spent years telling everyone I was the best big sister in the world. Yet Patrick could see her three o’clock thoughts. I couldn’t. The warm, buttery aroma of the chicken soup wafted across the table, turning my stomach into a knot of sharp, sudden nausea. “Willa? Aren’t you going to eat?” Lacey called out, waving her fork. A strange wave of awkwardness washed over me. I pulled out a chair and sat down, picking up my silverware and instinctively turning toward Patrick, waiting. There was no bowl of soup waiting for me. No glass of water. Dinners with Patrick had always been a quiet ritual of pampering. He pulled out my chair, ladled my soup, portioned out my rice, and nudged the tenderest cuts of meat onto my plate before taking a single bite himself. I had grown so used to his devotion that it felt like second nature. I looked up. Patrick was dropping the choice drumstick into Lacey’s bowl. “Since when did you two get so close?” I asked, the words dropping like stones into the quiet room. Both of them froze. Lacey broke into a sudden, high-pitched giggle. “Gross, Willa. I still can’t stand him. Honestly, you should just divorce him like I did mine, and we can go hire some gorgeous male models together!” I shifted my gaze to Patrick. His eyes were fixed entirely on Lacey, his jaw clenched, his stare dark and unblinking. “You hire male models?” The weight in his voice, the raw edge in his eyes—that wasn’t the look of a protective brother-in-law. I set my fork down with a quiet clatter. After dinner, I shut myself in the master bedroom, pulling my velvet jewelry box from the vanity drawer. Five years of dating. Two years of marriage. Six rings. Patrick had never once forgotten an anniversary. During our fourth year together, when the date had fallen right in the middle of his grueling business trip to Toronto, I had resigned myself to spending the evening alone. But he had caught a red-eye flight, rushing through our front door just before midnight. Finding me curled up on the sofa, fighting off sleep beside a melting cake, he had wrapped his arms around me with a breathless, disbelieving laugh. “I came back to you, Willa,” he had whispered against the shell of my ear. “I’ll always come back to you.” I had spent weeks looking forward to today. I had caught him lingering over a designer lookbook on the coffee table, studying a delicate new release from a jewelry artist I had loved for years. I had been so sure. “Willa, let’s start clearing out our things from the master bedroom,” Patrick’s voice called out from the doorway. I turned around. He was leaning against the frame, holding two flattened cardboard boxes under his arm. “What?” I asked, my voice barely audible. “You know how delicate Lacey is,” he said, stepping inside. “The guest room hasn’t been aired out in months. She’s high-maintenance and carrying a child—it makes more sense to let her take the master suite for now.” He walked over, his fingers brushing against my cheek, his eyes dropping toward the open jewelry box. He leaned down, his lips brushing my ear. “Don’t look so sour. I already got your present. You can open it tonight.” A deep, suffocating stiffness locked up my limbs. I glanced up at our wedding portrait mounted on the wall above the bed—my younger self laughing into the camera, glowing and radiant. “I had a deep-cleaning service scrub that guest room three days ago, Patrick.” He sighed, shaking his head with the weary patience of an adult dealing with an unreasonable child. “She’s allergic to dust, Willa. You know that.” “I have dust allergies too—” “Stop it, both of you.” Lacey was standing just outside the threshold. In the soft hallway light, a delicate film of unshed tears shimmered in her eyes. “I’ll just take the guest room,” she whispered, her voice fragile and bruised. “If I have an allergic flare-up, I’ll just take some antihistamines. I get it. Even if this is my sister’s house, I’m still just an unwanted guest imposing on your lives.” She dabbed at the corner of her eye, forcing a small, brave smile. “I’ll go unpack in the other room. Patrick, don’t you dare upset my sister. If you make her cry, I won’t let you hear the end of it!” “Lacey, stop,” Patrick said, his brow furrowing as he reached out to steady her shoulder. “We’re moving into the guest room. Willa is your older sister. Making a small compromise shouldn’t kill her.” … I sat on the edge of the mattress in the guest room, watching the angry red hives bloom across my bare forearms. Patrick seemed to have entirely forgotten that my dust allergies were far more severe than Lacey’s had ever been. My phone buzzed intermittently on the nightstand. Every few minutes, a message popped up from Lacey—a stream of tearful emojis, performing guilt for an audience of one. The door pushed open, and Patrick walked in, rolling his shirt sleeves up to his elbows. He looked like a man who had just spent the last hour hauling heavy trunks into place. “Still pouting over her?” He sat down beside me, throwing an arm casually over my shoulders, entirely blind to the burning rash covering my skin. “I’m only keeping an eye on her so she doesn’t fill your head with garbage. I already told her she needs to look for her own place soon. I want my wife back to myself.” I stared ahead at the blank wall. “Do you honestly think I’m upset just because she moved in?” “Yeah, yeah,” he murmured, his thumb rubbing my shoulder in a hurried, distracted rhythm of appeasement. “I know. It’s fine. Don’t be mad.” He reached into his pocket and produced a small, navy velvet box, snapping it open to reveal a plain, thin gold band. It wasn’t the piece from the lookbook. It was something picked up in a hurry, generic and devoid of thought. “Happy anniversary,” he said. “Do you like it?” “Willa!” Lacey kicked the door open without knocking. The sudden, theatrical movement made the chain around her neck swing out from the collar of her silk pajamas. Dangling against her chest was a ring—a brilliant, blood-red ruby set in intricate platinum filigree. “Can we go out tomorrow?” she asked brightly. I didn’t answer. My eyes locked onto the crimson stone gleaming against her pale skin. “That’s a gorgeous ring,” I said, my voice dead and flat. “I’ve never seen you wear it before.” Lacey’s hand instinctively flew up, tucking the pendant back beneath her collar. Her gaze flicked toward Patrick for a fraction of a second. “Oh… a friend gave it to me,” she murmured. “Said the red makes my skin look brighter.” Throughout the entire exchange, Patrick kept his lips pressed into a thin, white line, silent as a grave. I fell into a fitful sleep late that night, only to be jerked awake by the shifting of the mattress. Patrick had never been someone who got up in the middle of the night. But tonight, this was the third time he had slipped out of bed. I swung my legs over the edge of the mattress, stepping barefoot across the hardwood, and pushed the door open just a crack. Down the dimly lit corridor, beneath the amber glow of the sconce, Patrick was standing beside Lacey. He held a glass of water, gently tipping the rim against her lips, letting her drink straight from his hands. “I have never met a woman as demanding as you,” he whispered, a soft, intimate fondness lacing every syllable. “Then deal with it,” Lacey hummed, her hand coming up to give his forearm a playful slap. “Or don’t you want to? Don’t forget whose baby this is…” A violent, scorching wave of nausea slammed into my throat. I clamped both hands over my mouth, but the retch escaped my chest—a sharp, strangled gasp that echoed down the quiet hallway. Both of them jumped. By the time they gathered themselves and hurried to the guest bathroom, I was gripping the porcelain sink, the cold tap running full blast, my face ghostly white in the mirror. Patrick reached out, rubbing my trembling back, while Lacey hurried to fill a paper cup with lukewarm water. I looked at their faces reflected in the glass beside mine, and a wave of profound terror swept through me. They looked like strangers wearing the skin of people I once knew. The moment Patrick stepped into the living room to rummage through the medicine cabinet, and Lacey drifted back toward the master bedroom, I pulled my phone from my pocket. My fingers shook as I tapped on a saved contact. “Hello, Mr. Vogel. I need to consult with you regarding divorce proceedings.” “Also… I need a referral for a discreet, private laboratory that handles expedited prenatal paternity testing.” I didn’t close my eyes for the rest of the night. The next morning, Patrick was still padding around the apartment in his sweatpants. I had assumed he simply had the day off, until a message from his junior colleague lit up my screen. “Hey Willa, sorry to bother you, but there’s a client deck Patrick needs to push through. He’s officially out on PTO and I didn’t want to ping him directly and get my head bitten off…” I pushed the bedroom door open and walked into the living room. Patrick immediately brought an index finger to his lips, his voice dropped to a hush. “Keep it down. Lacey is still sleeping. She was worried sick about you last night and didn’t fall asleep until dawn.” I didn’t lower my voice at all. “You burned through your annual leave without telling me?” After more than twenty-four hours of my cold, unyielding silence, the mask of patience on Patrick’s face was finally beginning to crack. Still, he kept his voice tightly modulated. “What do you mean, “without telling you”? It’s my PTO. I can use it however I damn well please.” “You promised you were saving every single day of it so we could take that trip to Europe together.” Patrick’s features went utterly rigid. Having lived with him for seven years, I recognized that blank flicker instantly. He hadn’t hidden it. He had simply forgotten. The promise we had built an entire year around had evaporated from his mind. “Look, what’s done is done,” he muttered, brushing past the slip. “We can take Lacey out today to get some fresh air. She just went through a brutal divorce, she’s pregnant, and she’s looking down the barrel of raising a child alone. Have a little empathy.” I watched the subtle twitch of his jaw, my fingernails digging so deeply into my palms that they threatened to pierce the skin. “I’ll talk to her today,” I said quietly. “I’ll help her schedule an appointment to terminate the pregnancy.” “No!” The word ripped from his throat, loud and jagged, cracking on the vowel. He caught himself a second too late, his eyes darting toward the closed master bedroom, regret flooding his expression. “I… I just mean, it’s an innocent life, Willa…” “Are you the father?” The question slipped from my lips, cruel and self-lacerating. “Why else would you be so terrified of losing it?” The silence that followed was suffocating. The master bedroom door clicked open, and Lacey stepped out, her face completely drained of color. “Willa, I’m keeping this baby. Even if I have to raise it entirely on my own, I won’t get an abortion.” As she spoke, her gaze flickered uncontrollably toward Patrick. Patrick cleared his throat, desperately steering the conversation away. “Alright, that’s enough. Let’s not talk about this right now. We’ll go out, get some lunch. I know a quiet botanical garden that would be good for everyone.” He reached out, trying to take my wrist to guide me toward the sofa. I yanked my arm back with such force that his hand slipped. I looked at him, then turned my gaze to Lacey. A cold, invisible fist seemed to wrap around my windpipe, choking off the air, screaming at me to stay silent. But the words tore free anyway. “Patrick, you didn’t answer my question.” My voice shook, but the words were razor-sharp. “Are you the father of that child? Why were you so panicked just now?” “Willa, are you out of your goddamn mind?!” Patrick’s face twisted into something ugly and dark. “What is wrong with you these past two days? From the second Lacey walked through that door, you’ve been acting like an insecure lunatic! Fine, I admit it—I know you hated the anniversary ring. But taking your petty, pathetic jealousy out on your own family?” He jabbed a finger toward Lacey. “She is pregnant! She’s your sister! Just because your own body is broken and you can’t carry a child doesn’t give you the right to despise her for having one!” A violent, uncontrollable tremor tore through my limbs. “Why… why do you think I can’t carry a child, Patrick?” “How the hell should I know?” A cruel, mocking sneer curled the edge of his lip. “You were the golden girl in high school, weren’t you? Prom queen, homecoming court. Who knows what you were doing in dark alleys back then? Maybe you got passed around until there was nothing left to salvage—” My palm struck his face with a crack that echoed off the high ceilings. His head snapped to the side. I whipped around, raising my hand to strike Lacey, but Patrick’s reflexes were faster. His fingers clamped around my wrist like a vice, twisting my arm back until bone ground against bone. Lacey let out a theatrical squeak, shrinking behind his broad back. I locked eyes with her, my chest heaving. “What did you tell him?” The dark alley. The frozen pavement. The men who cornered me behind the tutoring center while I was waiting to walk her home. Lacey was the only person in the world who knew the truth of what had happened to me that night. And now, she had rewritten it into a sordid, shameful lie to hand to my husband. Lacey shook her head frantically, tears spilling down her cheeks in heavy, perfect droplets. “I’m sorry, Willa! I swear I didn’t mean to let it slip! I was drunk that night, and I just… I talked about how you stayed out all night with those guys…” She sniffled, her voice trembling with manufactured innocence. “But I told him you were forced! I swore to him you didn’t want it!” “See, Lacey?” Patrick hissed, glaring down at me with pure venom. “She’s happy to throw dirt on everyone else, so why should you protect her dignity?” He let go of my wrist with a shove. The force sent me stumbling backward, my shoulder slamming hard into the drywall. My hip caught the edge of the console table, knocking down the framed canvas hanging above it. The glass shattered into a thousand glittering shards. The canvas tore right down the center. I stared at the ruined painting—an oil landscape Patrick had painted for me during our second year together. Looking at the torn brushstrokes of gold and crimson, I realized I could no longer tell whether he had been painting a sunrise or a sunset. “Come on, Lacey,” Patrick muttered, reaching behind him to take her hand. “I took this time off for you anyway. Let’s get out of here.” He guided her toward the front door, stepping right past where I lay crumpled against the wall. Suddenly, a blinding, tearing cramp seized my lower abdomen. It felt like something vital was being ripped violently from the lining of my body. I reached out blindly, my voice breaking in sheer, unadulterated panic. “Patrick… Patrick, please. My stomach hurts so bad… I think I’m bleeding…” Patrick paused at the threshold, turning half a profile toward me. A cold, dismissive smirk played upon his mouth. “Done slinging mud, so now you’re faking a miscarriage?” He scoffed softly. “Willa, don’t be pathetic. You can’t even get pregnant.” I looked down at the dark, blooming stain rapidly soaking through the grey fabric of my sweatpants. “What if I am?” I whispered, my voice hollow. “What if there’s really a baby?” “Then flush it,” he said, turning toward the open doorway without a second thought. “Anything that comes out of you would be too filthy to keep.” … “The fetal heartbeat has ceased. We need to perform an evacuation procedure immediately.” “Ma’am, could you provide your spouse’s contact information for the consent forms?” I lay on the cold, sterile gurney under the glaring fluorescent lights. “I don’t have a spouse,” I said, staring at the white ceiling tiles. “He’s dead.” The attending physician looked down at me, her eyes softening with a quiet, solemn pity. She didn’t press further. When the icy metal instruments entered my body, I felt nothing at all. No pain. No sorrow. Just a vast, cavernous numbness—the exact same hollow detachment I had felt years ago, lying on the asphalt of that alley after the footsteps finally faded away. Lacey had been a year younger than me back then, but old enough to understand what had taken place. She had sobbed until she threw up, clinging to my bloody jacket. “Willa, if you hadn’t come to pick me up from prep class, none of this would have happened. It’s all my fault… I swear to God, I will take this to my grave. I will never tell a living soul!” That was why, when Patrick first entered my life, Lacey had been so venomously protective. Or so I had thought. Years later, when Patrick had talked about forever, I had sat him down and told him the truth. I had told him that I had been violated, that I carried scars that might never heal. “If you know that I’m not whole,” I had asked him, “would you still want me?” Patrick had pulled me into his arms, weeping against my hair, and asked me to marry him on the spot. “Willa, the fact that you survived something so cruel just means I have to spend the rest of my life loving you a thousand times harder,” he had sworn. “I don’t need a pristine, untouched version of you. I just need you. That is more than enough.” “Take your antibiotics on time,” the nurse said gently, handing me a small paper bag of prescriptions. “Rest for the next week, and try to keep your spirits up.” I nodded numbly, taking the bag and pulling out my phone to tap through the billing portal. That was when I noticed Lacey’s social media feed was suddenly unlocked for me. There was a new post, uploaded twenty minutes ago: “With you by my side, I think the baby and I are ready to fall in love with the world all over again.” Attached was a photo. A candid shot of a man’s broad back as he waited in line at an artisanal gelato stand. A back I would recognize anywhere in this life or the next. He had once stood in line for three hours in the pouring rain at an outdoor music festival just to buy me a limited-edition vinyl. He had once shoved his way through a crowded street fair just to bring me lavender ice cream before it melted. I let out a slow, trembling breath, opening an email from my attorney and downloading the finalized divorce decree. I walked home like a ghost, pushing the front door open. The living room had been entirely transformed. The dining table was buried under mountains of pastel infant clothes, baby monitors, and boxes of designer diapers. A bouquet of soft pink balloons bobbed gently against the ceiling. Patrick was sitting on the sofa, scrolling through his tablet, while Lacey happily sorted tiny cotton onesies into neat piles. On the coffee table between them sat a legal document. Patrick looked up as I walked in. His eyes dropped to the pharmacy bag dangling from my fingers, lingering for a beat before hardening again. “Read the paperwork,” he said, gesturing to the table. “If you don’t have any objections, sign it.” “What is this?” I asked. Lacey looked up, her smile sweet and practiced. “Willa, I’ve thought about it. If your body really can’t carry a child… I’m willing to let you raise mine as your own.” I looked down at the custody and adoption agreement. A dry, bitter laugh tore from my throat. “Are you offering this because you pity my broken body, Lacey? Or are you just trying to give your bastard a legal father without making Patrick look like a monster?” Lacey bit her lower lip so hard it turned white, unable to squeeze out a single word. Patrick’s gaze turned arctic. “Willa, must your mind always dwell in the gutter?” “If your conscience is so clean, Patrick, why don’t you submit to a paternity test right now?” He opened his mouth, but nothing came out. After a long, suffocating pause, he shook his head with an arrogant chuckle. “You’re completely irrational.” He leaned back, crossing his legs. “Frankly, I don’t even need your signature right now. When you cool off and use your head, you’ll thank me. It’s hard out there for a single mother, and having an infertile wife doesn’t exactly help my standing in the company. This solves problems for everyone.” A bone-chilling cold swept through my chest. Looking at the man sitting on that sofa, I felt as though I was looking at a creature I had never seen before in my life. “Then let’s just end it,” I said. I reached into my bag and pulled out the divorce papers, dropping them onto the glass table. My signature was already inked in black at the bottom. Lacey’s back stiffened against the cushions, a sudden, hungry flicker of hope flashing behind her eyes. The fake, patronizing smirk melted completely off Patrick’s face. “I’m not signing this, Willa. We need to sit down and talk like adults.” “There is nothing left to talk about.” I pulled a single sheet of paper from my coat pocket. “This medical report proves the exact biological relationship between you and the child in Lacey’s stomach,” I lied smoothly, holding it between two fingers. “And tomorrow morning, a copy of it can either sit in your desk drawer, or on the desk of your managing director.” Lacey lunged forward, her nails clawing toward the paper, but I stepped back with effortless ease. I waved the paper slightly, my eyes boring into Patrick’s pale, sweat-slicked face. “So tell me, Patrick. Are you going to sign this divorce decree right now? Or do you want to take your pregnant mistress by the hand and be dragged through the mud together?”
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