Chapter 1 - The Suitcase Between Us
“What?” Everett repeated.
“My flight leaves at six. The Chicago audit starts tomorrow.”
He looked at the silver suitcase as though someone had planted it in our bedroom to threaten him.
“You’re not getting on a plane like this.”
“Then I’ll call a doctor and ask whether I should.”
“Sophie, you nearly collapsed.”
“And you’re carrying me as if I’ve lost the ability to make decisions.”
That stopped him.
For a moment, only the rain spoke.
Then he lowered me gently onto the bed.
“You’re right,” he said.
I had prepared for an argument. His agreement left me strangely defenseless.
Everett crouched in front of me, keeping his hands on his own knees.
“May I call someone?”
“Yes.”
He called the overnight medical service our building recommended. When the nurse asked questions, he handed me the phone instead of answering for me.
It was a small thing.
I noticed anyway.
After discussing my symptoms, the nurse recommended an assessment that night because of the weakness and abdominal discomfort. Everett helped me into a sweater. Neither of us mentioned the suitcase again.
At the hospital, a nurse named Denise brought me a warm blanket and asked Everett to step outside for part of the intake.
He obeyed immediately.
“Do you feel safe at home?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Do you have someone who can support you?”
I looked toward the closed door.
“That’s a more complicated question.”
She waited.
“He loves me,” I said. “Sometimes he treats loving me like something he can manage behind a locked door.”
Denise’s expression softened without becoming pitying.
“Then tonight might be a good time to tell him what you need.”
The pregnancy test came back positive.
For several seconds, I stared at the doctor’s mouth without hearing anything else.
Pregnant.
Not a possibility anymore.
A fact.
The doctor explained what they could establish that night and what would need follow-up. After fluids, my dizziness began to ease. There were instructions, questions, appointments to arrange.
Everett sat beside me, perfectly still.
Under the blanket, my fingers trembled.
“Are you happy?” I asked.
He turned so quickly his chair scraped the floor.
“Yes.”
The word came out broken.
Then he looked at me more carefully.
“Are you?”
“I think so. I’m scared.”
“So am I.”
“You don’t usually admit that.”
“I’m beginning to suspect that’s part of the problem.”
I laughed once, and then, without warning, I cried.
Not delicate tears.
The kind that made breathing difficult.
Everett reached toward me, then paused.
I took his hand.
“I can’t do this as your secret,” I whispered.
His face changed.
“Sophie—”
“I can survive people knowing I married you. I can survive gossip. But I cannot spend my pregnancy stepping out of photographs.”
“You won’t.”
“You said six months.”
He bowed his head.
“I know.”
“You said after the refinancing. After the lawsuit. After the vote.”
“I know.”
“And every time, I helped you find another reason.”
That hurt him. I could see it.
For once, I let it.
“I thought keeping you private meant keeping you safe,” he said.
“Safe people still get to exist.”
He looked at our joined hands for a long time.
Then he lifted mine and pressed his mouth against my knuckles.
“Tomorrow,” he said. “We start fixing this tomorrow.”
“No grand announcement without discussing it with me.”
“Agreed.”
“No canceling my work because I’m pregnant.”
“Agreed.”
“And no promising that everyone will be kind.”
His eyes met mine.
“They won’t be.”
There he was.
The man I could trust when he stopped trying to control the weather.
“But I’ll stand beside you,” he added.
Before I could answer, his phone vibrated.
A message lit the screen.
Everett read it.
His expression emptied.
“What is it?”
He handed me the phone.
The message came from Malcolm Voss, Blackwell Northbridge’s chief financial officer.
We need to discuss your operations manager before Chicago opens its books. There are serious questions about her relationship with you.
Below it was a photograph.
Everett and me outside the Manhattan clerk’s office.
Two years earlier.
His hand rested against my back.
My face was turned toward his.
May you like
Someone had known.
And they had waited until tonight to tell him.
