9. Odette
— ? —
Odette
One Week Later
Elliott and I have talked every single day since Florida.
Somewhere in all those late phone calls and voice memos and nights I fell asleep with my phone warm against my cheek, I fell, quietly and without ever deciding to, and I’ve been careful not to look at it head on.
The way you don’t look directly at the sun.
Three nights ago I stopped being careful.
It was almost eleven when he knocked. I’d mentioned on the phone an hour earlier, in passing, that the nausea was bad again, that I couldn’t keep anything down, and then we’d moved on to other things. I didn’t think about it twice. Twenty minutes later my buzzer went off.
He was standing in my hallway with a grocery bag and rain in his hair.
“You didn’t have to come,” I said.
“I know.” He toed off his wet shoes at the door, already at home in a way that should’ve alarmed me. “Ginger. Real ginger, not the candy. Plain crackers. And those lemon ices you said your mother used to give you.” He held up the bag like evidence. “I read that ginger helps.”
I stood there in an old shirt, no makeup, my hair a disaster, and couldn’t find a single word.
He made me tea in my own kitchen while I curled up on the couch under a blanket.
He didn’t fuss. He didn’t perform his own helpfulness the way Laurence used to perform everything.
He just moved quietly through my apartment, found the mugs on the second try, grated fresh ginger into hot water with the little knife I keep for opening mail, and brought it to me steaming.
“Small sips,” he said, and sat on the floor beside the couch, his back against the cushions, close enough that I could feel the warmth of him through the blanket.
We didn’t talk much. Rain came down against the windows.
The city hummed somewhere below us. I drank my tea and watched the back of his head, the line of his shoulders, the loose way his hand rested on his knee, and the nausea eased, and something else took its place.
Something warm and enormous and terrifying.
Low in my belly, faint as a moth against glass, I felt her move.
The first time. So small I could’ve imagined it.
I didn’t think. I reached down, took his hand off his knee, and pressed it flat to the side of my stomach.
“What,” he started, and then went very still. “Is that...”
“It’s too early for you to feel it,” I whispered. “The books say weeks yet.”
“Then why is my hand on your stomach?”
“Because I wanted you to be the first to try.”
He turned around. Looked up at me from the floor, his hand still warm against the small swell of me, his face open and undone, and I understood, with a clarity that stole the breath out of me, that I was in love with him.
That I’d been for a while. That I’d walked out of one Fairbanks and straight into the arms of another, and that this one, God help me, felt nothing like a mistake.
That’s the thing I’ve been refusing to look at.
That I love Elliott Fairbanks and have no idea what to do with it.
I’m pregnant with his brother’s child. I’m still, on paper, someone else’s wife.
The divorce papers sit unsigned on Laurence’s desk and none of this is simple, none of it’s safe, and I let myself want him anyway.
That night, on the couch, with his hand on our baby and rain on the glass, I didn’t pull away.
Today is the first ultrasound.
I’m terrified.
The OB office is on the Upper East Side, a sleek modern building that smells like antiseptic and money. I stand outside for a full minute before I can make myself go in, my hands clutching my purse, my heart pounding against my ribs.
“Hey.” Elliott’s voice behind me. “You okay?”
I turn. He’s wearing a gray sweater and dark jeans, his hair still damp from the shower, his face creased with concern. He has my coat draped over his arm, the one I forgot in his car this morning when he picked me up.
“I don’t know if I can do this,” I admit.
“You can.” He hands me the coat. “But you don’t have to do it alone.”
We walk in together.
The waiting room is painted a soothing shade of pale green, with comfortable chairs and soft music playing from hidden speakers. There are magazines on the end tables, glossy publications about pregnancy and parenting and all the things I never let myself dream about because I’d given up.
I sign in at the reception desk. My hand shakes as I write my name.
“Mrs. Fairbanks?” The receptionist smiles at me. “The doctor will be with you shortly. Is your husband joining you today?”
I open my mouth to answer, but before I can speak, a voice cuts across the waiting room and my whole body goes cold.
“Yes. Her husband is joining her.”
I turn slowly, already knowing what I’ll see.
Laurence is standing near the entrance, his coat still on, his face flushed from the cold outside. He looks like he’s been running, or maybe waiting. Watching. Stalking.
“What are you doing here?” My voice comes out flat. Controlled.
“I have every right to be here.” He walks toward me, his shoes clicking against the tile. “This is my baby. My child. You can’t shut me out of this.”
“I can do whatever I want.”
“No.” He stops in front of me, too close, invading my space the way he always used to when he wanted to intimidate me into compliance. “You can’t. I’m the father. I have rights. And I’m going to be in that room when they do the ultrasound.”
The waiting room has gone quiet. Everyone is watching. The receptionist has her hand on the phone, ready to call security.
Elliott steps forward. “She doesn’t want you here, Laurence.”
Laurence’s eyes snap to his brother. His face twists with something ugly.
“Stay out of this. This has nothing to do with you.”
“It has everything to do with me.”
“Because you’re fucking my wife?”
The words land like a slap. A woman in the corner gasps. A man looks up from his magazine with wide eyes.
“Laurence.” My voice comes out flat and hard. “You need to leave.”
“I’m not leaving. I have a right to be here. I have a right to see my baby.”
“You have no rights.” I turn to the receptionist, who’s watching the scene unfold with barely concealed horror. “This man isn’t on my approved list. I didn’t authorize him to receive any information about my pregnancy. Please have security escort him out.”
The receptionist hesitates for just a moment. Then she picks up the phone and makes a call.
“You can’t do this,” Laurence says. His voice is rising. “This is my child. My blood. My heir. You can’t keep me from my own child.”
“Watch me.”
Two security guards appear, large men in dark uniforms who look like they’ve dealt with difficult situations before. They approach Laurence calm and unhurried, and take up positions on either side of him.
“Sir,” one of them says. “We’re going to need you to come with us.”
“This is ridiculous.” Laurence shakes off the hand that reaches for his arm. “I’m not some stranger. I’m her husband. I’m the father of that baby.”
“Sir.” The guard’s voice hardens. “Now.”
For a moment I think Laurence is going to fight. I can see it in the tension of his shoulders, the clench of his jaw, the way his hands curl into fists at his sides. He’s always hated being told no. He’s always hated being dismissed.
But there are too many witnesses. Too many phones that could start recording at any moment. Too many ways this could end up in the papers or on social media or whispered about at the next charity gala.
He straightens his coat. Smooths his hair. Puts the mask back on.
“This isn’t over,” he says to me. “I’ll be at every appointment. Every checkup. Every milestone. You can’t keep me away from my child forever.”
“Goodbye, Laurence.”
The guards escort him out. I watch him go, my heart pounding, my hands trembling at my sides.
The worst part is that he isn’t entirely wrong.
I’m still his wife. As long as that’s true, the world will look at my baby and hand her to him without asking me a thing, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it except get free of him faster than he can sink his claws in.
He doesn’t have to love her. He doesn’t have to be good.
He only has to be my husband a little while longer, and he knows it, and he’s counting on it.
Elliott’s hand touches my elbow. “Are you okay?”
“No.” I turn to face him. “But I’ll be.”
The ultrasound room is small and dim, with a bed covered in paper and a machine that looks like something out of a science fiction movie. The technician is a kind-faced woman named Denise who asks me questions in a soft voice and explains everything she’s doing as she does it.
I lie on the bed. Elliott stands beside me, holding my coat, just like he did at the clinic on the night everything fell apart.
“This might be a little cold,” Denise says, squeezing gel onto my stomach.
It’s cold. I flinch. Elliott’s hand finds mine and squeezes.
Denise moves the wand across my belly, pressing gently, angling it this way and that. The screen beside her fills with gray and black shapes that mean nothing to me, static and shadows and the occasional blob that could be anything.
“There we go,” she says softly. “Do you see that?”
I look at where she’s pointing. And there, in the middle of all that gray, is a shape. A curled body, a round head, the curve of a spine, and then, as I watch, one leg kicks out.
My baby.
“Let me find the heartbeat,” Denise says.
She adjusts the wand. The room fills with sound.
Whoosh-whoosh-whoosh. Fast and rhythmic, like a tiny drum being played underwater. The most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard.
“That’s your baby’s heartbeat,” Denise says, smiling. “Strong and healthy.”
I can’t speak. There are tears running down my face, but I’m not sad. I’m not scared. I’m something else entirely, something I don’t have a word for, something that feels like hope and terror and joy all tangled together.
Elliott’s hand tightens around mine. I look up at him and see that his eyes are wet too.
“Odette,” he whispers. “Look at her.”
Her.
I don’t know if the baby is a girl. Denise hasn’t said. But the quiet certainty in the way he says it makes it feel true.
“Do you want a printout?” Denise asks.
“Yes.” My voice cracks. “Please.”
She prints two copies. I take one and press it to my chest like it’s precious, which it is. The most precious thing I’ve ever held.
Elliott takes the other. He looks at it for a long moment, his thumb brushing over the grainy image, the tiny curled shape, the beginning of a life.
Then he opens his wallet and slides the printout inside, careful and reverent, like he’s putting away something sacred.
I stare at him. “What are you doing?”
“Keeping her safe.” He closes the wallet and tucks it back into his pocket. “She should have someone looking out for her.”
“Elliott.”
He looks at me. His eyes are still wet. His face is open in a way I’ve never seen before, vulnerable and hopeful and terrified all at once.
“She’s real,” he whispers.