10. Chantal
— ? —
Chantal
Cedrick’s BMW is in the clinic parking lot.
I see it as soon as Isaac pulls in - that sleek black profile I’ve been looking at for four years, parked right beside the main entrance like a statement. Like a claim.
Isaac sees it too. His jaw tightens.
“You don’t have to go in there alone.”
“I won’t be alone. You’re coming with me.”
He looks over at me, something unreadable flickering behind his eyes. “Are you sure? He’s going to lose his mind when he sees me.”
“Good.”
“Chantal-”
“He’s been calling the clinic all week pretending to be a concerned husband. The receptionist told me Monday. He knew the date, the time - he’s not here to apologize, Isaac. He’s here to stand next to that door and make me deal with him.” I unbuckle my seatbelt. “So he can deal with both of us.”
“Okay.” He kills the engine. “For the record, this is either the best or worst idea you’ve had all month.”
“It’s the eighth best. Come on.”
I push open the truck door before I can second-guess myself, and Isaac is beside me in three steps, his hand warm and steady on the small of my back as we walk toward the entrance.
Cedrick intercepts us before we reach the door.
“What the hell is this?”
He’s in workout clothes, unshaven, and up close he looks like a man who hasn’t slept in days - which, according to the shadows under his eyes, he hasn’t.
His gaze bounces between me and Isaac. Between Isaac’s hand and my back.
And I watch his face cycle through a dozen emotions before it lands, predictably, on fury.
“This is my eight-month checkup,” I say evenly. “Which you never would have known about if you hadn’t been calling the clinic pretending we’re still a functioning household.”
“I am a concerned husband-”
“You’re a cheating liar who’s been served with divorce papers. You don’t get to show up at my doctor’s appointments.”
“And you brought him.” His voice climbs. “Jesus Christ, Chantal. He’s my best friend.”
“Was,” Isaac says.
One word. Flat as a closed door.
Cedrick flinches like it hit bone. Then he turns back to me, and his voice drops into the register he thinks is reasonable.
“That’s my baby. That’s my daughter in there. You can’t cut me out-”
“Eight months, Cedrick.” My voice doesn’t rise.
It doesn’t have to. “You’ve known about her for eight months, and the first appointment you fight to attend is the one after I left you.
You missed her heartbeat for a client emergency.
You missed the gender for drinks with Mitchell.
But now that she’s leverage, suddenly you’re a father. ”
“That’s not-” He drags a hand through his hair. “That’s not fair.”
“No, it isn’t. It wasn’t fair for eight months. You just never had to sit in the waiting room with it.”
“You can’t keep me from my child.” But his voice has lost its edge, gone thin around the borders. “That’s not how this works.”
“Then maybe you should have thought about that before you fucked her best friend.”
I walk past him without another word, Isaac’s hand steady on my back, and I don’t look back.
Behind us, the automatic doors slide shut on whatever he says next.
***
The ultrasound room is dim and quiet, a cocoon of privacy after the parking lot.
I lie on the exam table with my dress pulled up over my belly, the paper crinkling beneath me every time I breathe. The technician - a cheerful woman named Dana who’s done three of my appointments now - squirts the cold gel across my skin.
“Ready to see your girl?”
“More than ready.”
Isaac’s chair is three inches from the exam table.
I know this because I keep measuring the distance with my peripheral vision.
Because the room is dim and intimate in a way that makes everything feel closer than it is, and because his hand is resting on his knee, and some traitorous part of my brain keeps thinking about how easy it would be to reach over and take it.
He’s not her father. He’s not your husband. He’s not yours to hold hands with in dark rooms.
I fold my hands over my chest and stare at the ceiling instead.
“Dad stuck in traffic?” Dana asks, making conversation as she adjusts the wand.
Isaac and I exchange a look.
“Something like that,” I manage.
The wand presses against my skin, and suddenly the room fills with sound - that rapid, rhythmic whooshing that never fails to make my breath catch. My daughter’s heartbeat, strong and steady, filling every corner of the space.
“There she is.” Dana smiles at the screen. “Strong heartbeat. Right on track.”
Isaac leans forward.
His eyes are fixed on the monitor - on the grainy image of my daughter, her tiny fingers, her perfect profile, the impossible reality of her - and he’s blinking hard. And failing at it.
“That’s her,” he breathes. “That’s really her.”
“You want prints?” Dana asks.
“Yes.” Immediate. No hesitation. “All of them. However many you’re allowed to do.”
Dana grins at me. “I like this one. Most of them pretend they’re not crying.”
“I’m not crying.”
“Uh-huh.” She hits a button, and the printer starts humming. “There’s a hand. See it? She’s waving.”
“She’s waving,” Isaac repeats, like she just announced a miracle.
I stop watching the screen entirely.
I watch his face instead.
The wonder there. The awe. The way his whole expression has gone soft and reverent, like he’s in church, like he’s witnessing something holy. The wet shine he keeps blinking against and losing to.
Cedrick never looked like that.
Not at the first ultrasound, when she was a flutter on a screen.
Not when we found out she was a girl and I cried in the car for twenty minutes afterward.
Not at any of the appointments he actually bothered to attend, always checking his phone, always with one foot out the door.
He looked at this screen the way he looked at expense reports - interested enough, but detached.
Like it was data. Like she was happening to someone else, in someone else’s life, at some inconvenient hour.
Isaac looks at my daughter like she’s a miracle he doesn’t deserve to witness.
Stop looking at him. Look at the screen. The screen is why you’re here.
Something cracks open in my chest. Something I didn’t know was sealed shut, and to my horror my eyes go hot.
“Hey.” Isaac catches it instantly, because of course he does. His hand moves toward mine, stops halfway, falls back to his knee. “Hey - are you okay? Is it him? The parking lot? Because we can talk about it, we can-”
“It’s not him.” The truth comes out before I can dress it in something safer. “It’s you.”
He goes still. “Me?”
“The way you’re looking at her.” My voice wobbles, and I hate it. “Like she matters. Like she’s real.”
“She is real.”
“I know. But you’re the first person who’s looked at her like-” I stop. Swallow. “Never mind. Hormones. Ignore me.”
“Chantal-”
“That’s her nose,” I say, pointing at the screen, desperate for a redirect. “See? Right there.”
He’s quiet for a moment. Letting me get away with it. Then, softly: “Yeah. That’s really her nose.”
Dana prints six copies. Isaac takes all of them.
***
After the appointment, Isaac walks me to my door.
The rental house looks slightly less dismal in the afternoon light - I’ve planted flowers in the window boxes, hung curtains that almost match, convinced myself that “character” is another word for “crooked floors.” The whole way up the walk, he’s quiet in a way that has weight to it.
Like he’s carrying something he’s trying to decide whether to set down.
At the porch steps, he clears his throat.
“I need to tell you something.”
My heart stutters. “Okay.”
“I know it’s terrible timing. The worst timing, probably. But I’ve been carrying this for five years, and after today-” He exhales hard, the sound ragged. “I can’t do it anymore.”
“Isaac-”
“Let me finish.” His voice cracks on it. “Please. If I stop now I’ll never get it out.”
I close my mouth. Grip the porch railing. Wait.
“I’ve been in love with you since-”
He stops.
Something happens behind his face. Some door swinging most of the way shut.
“Since before your wedding,” he says.
The words hit like ice water. Like a slap. Like something I’ve been waiting to hear without knowing I was listening.
“I stood up there and clapped,” he continues, the words tumbling out fast now, like he’s jumping off a cliff and can’t stop his momentum, “and I thought - he doesn’t deserve her.
And I was right. I was right about everything, and I did nothing about it for five years, because doing nothing felt like loyalty and it was actually just cowardice with better manners. ”
“Five years.” My voice comes out very small. “You’ve - five years?”
“Five years.”
“You helped him pick out my anniversary gifts.”
“I know.”
“The earrings. Year two. The emerald ones that matched my eyes, the ones I cried over because I thought he’d finally seen me-”
“Mine. My pick.” He laughs, and it’s the most wretched sound I’ve ever heard. “He wanted to get you a gift card. A gift card, Chantal. For your anniversary. To a steakhouse you don’t even like.”
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry, so my body splits the difference and produces something in between - a sound I’ve never made before, half sob and half disbelief.
“I don’t expect anything,” he pushes on.
“I know this is complicated. I know you’re going through a divorce and you’re about to have a baby and the last thing you need is me dumping five years of this on your porch like emotional baggage.
But after watching you stand up to him in that parking lot - after watching her wave on that screen-” His hands flex at his sides, like they’re searching for something to hold.
“I need you to know I’m not here because you’re convenient.
I’m not the vulture circling the wreckage.
I’m not the rebound guy hoping proximity turns into something more.
I’m here because I’ve loved you for half a decade, and I’m done pretending I don’t. ”
The afternoon sun catches his eyes and turns them amber. Gold. Something burning between the two.
Say something kind and get inside. He is your husband’s best friend, you are eight months pregnant, and there is a lawyer somewhere being paid to make this exact moment mean something. Do not want this. You are not allowed to want this on a porch in daylight.
“Say something,” he breathes. “Please.”
I open my mouth.
Nothing comes out.
Because I don’t know what I’m feeling. I don’t know if it’s real or if it’s rebound or if it’s just the desperate gratitude of someone who’s been starving for years finally being offered food.
I don’t know how to hold a confession this size in the same hands that are still holding divorce papers and custody agreements and the shattered pieces of a life I thought I understood.
“I can’t give you an answer tonight,” I finally manage.
“I’m not asking for one.”
“Then what are you asking for?”
“Nothing.” He shakes his head slowly. “Just - know it. That’s all. Whatever you decide, whatever this becomes or doesn’t become, I needed it to be true out loud at least once.” His voice drops. “It’s been true in the dark for five years. That’s long enough.”
It’s been true in the dark for five years.
I stand there on my crooked rental porch, eight months pregnant with another man’s child, two weeks out of a marriage that was a performance, and I look at Isaac Wren standing on my steps with his heart in his hands like an offering he’s not sure I’ll accept.
I should be grieving. I should be focused on lawyers, custody filings, the war that’s coming.
But here’s what I know - the only thing I know for certain, standing in the last gold light of the afternoon:
For the first time in months, maybe years, I don’t feel alone.
“Goodnight, Isaac,” I whisper.
“Goodnight, Chantal.”
I go inside and close the door, and then I stand with my back against it, hand pressed over my racing heart, listening.
It takes him a full minute to walk back to his truck.
I count every second of it.