What Happened the Following Morning Changed Everything

I stared at him. The man I had loved. The man I had saved from bankruptcy three days ago.

I didn’t argue. I didn’t scream. Something inside the love I held for him quietly withered and died, leaving behind a cold, hard resolve.

I called the Uber myself.

Six hours later.

The hospital room was sterile and cold. The only sound was the rhythmic beeping of the monitors and the soft snuffling of the two tiny bundles in the plastic bassinets next to my bed.

A boy and a girl. Leo and Mia.

They were perfect. Tiny fingers, button noses, lungs that had screamed their arrival into the world with a ferocity that made me proud.

I was alone.

No flowers on the bedside table. No pacing father. No grandparents cooing at the glass.

I picked up my phone. I opened Instagram.

There was a new post from Ethan, uploaded twenty minutes ago. It was a selfie of him and Isabella, their faces flushed with alcohol, holding glasses of vintage champagne. The background was the library of the Manor—my library.

The caption read: Celebrating the new house with the queen of my life. Finally, a woman who brings something to the table. #NewBeginnings #Upgrade

I felt a tear slide down my cheek, hot and angry.

The nurse walked in to check my vitals. She was an older woman with kind eyes. She looked around the empty room, then at me.

“Is the father coming, honey?” she asked gently. “We need the birth certificate information.”

I looked at my son. I looked at my daughter.

“No,” I said, my voice hardening into steel. “He made his choice.”

The door opened the next morning.

I was breastfeeding Leo, exhaustion pulling at my eyelids. Ethan walked in. He smelled of stale bourbon and Isabella’s cloying, expensive perfume. He was wearing the same suit from the night before, now rumpled.

He wasn’t holding flowers. He wasn’t holding a teddy bear.

He was holding a thick manila envelope.

He didn’t look at the babies. He didn’t ask if I was okay. He walked to the foot of the bed and tossed the envelope onto the blanket near my feet.

“We need to talk,” he said, rubbing his temples. “Isabella thinks… I mean, I think… this isn’t working.”

Part 3: The Severance
I adjusted Leo, covering him with a blanket. I looked at Ethan calmly.

“You missed the birth,” I said. “Leo is six pounds, four ounces. Mia is five pounds, nine ounces.”