Chapter 13
Lucas
Home was different now. I could tell by the way Bella set her keys on the counter, deliberate, controlled, as if announcing her presence to an audience that had stopped listening.
Grace’s room was dark, her crib untouched, a tiny onesie draped over the rail like a flag of surrender.
The smell of antiseptic still lingered in the hallway.
I stood in the entryway, hands in my pockets, trying to recognize the house that was supposed to be mine.
Evelyn moved through the rooms with the efficiency of a field medic: cleaning, prepping, running load after load of laundry.
She said nothing about my absence, only updated me on Bella’s sleep schedule, the appointments, the stream of casseroles left by well-meaning neighbors.
Olivia came twice a week to drive Bella to her postnatal visits, stayed long enough to offer encouragement, then left in a flurry of perfume and whispered advice.
Bella’s days were now a string of tasks: medication, wound care, calls with the hospital to check on Grace. She asked for nothing, expected even less. When I offered to bring groceries or cover the next month’s mortgage, she declined with a shake of her head.
“I’m not a charity case,” she said, voice like glass. “I only need help with Grace’s bills.”
So I paid those, and nothing else.
I moved into a furnished apartment above a bar.
The walls were the color of wet cardboard, the windows looked onto an alley clogged with trash and delivery trucks.
I brought only what I could fit in three boxes: a suitcase of clothes, a laptop, and the watch Bella had given me, which I kept in a drawer, unable to look at it.
Therapy was every Tuesday at 6 p.m. The first session, I told the woman across from me—hair in a bun, clipboard at the ready—that I didn’t need help, I just needed to not make it worse. She wrote something in her notes, then asked why I believed that was possible.
I didn’t have an answer. Most weeks, I left her office more numb than before, but at least it was an organized numbness, a way to catalog my failures in neat, clinical terms.
I told Christian I was stepping away from the company for a while. He didn’t ask why.
“Just don’t let Dad find out,” he said.
I handed him a list of passwords, access codes, the transition plan for the merger. I gave him the authority to run an internal audit—to see if anything about my relationship with Victoria had compromised the business. He looked at the file for a long moment, then at me.
“You know this is overkill.”
I shrugged. “I’d rather be sure.”
He nodded, respect and pity battling behind his eyes.
“If you want to fix it,” he said, “start with your family.”
I told him I was trying. But it didn’t feel like enough.
Ending things with Victoria was almost procedural. I drafted a formal message, copied Bella’s lawyer, and kept the language dry and impersonal.
Effective immediately, I am terminating all personal and professional communication.
She replied in minutes.
I never asked you to ruin your marriage. You chose every meeting. Every lie.
I read it twice, the words plain as brick. There was no anger. Just fact.
I closed the email, blocked her number, and left it at that.
One night, the hospital called about a complication. Grace’s oxygen dropped, her lungs struggling to keep up. I drove there in twenty minutes, parking on the curb and running through the rain like a man with something left to lose.
The nurse told me Bella was already in with the baby. I stood at the glass, watching mother and daughter suspended in matching orbits, Bella’s hand inside the isolette, her head bent low, whispering words that sounded more like prayer than comfort.
I waited until the nurse said I could enter. Bella didn’t look at me, just asked, “What are you doing here?”
“I heard. I wanted—” I stopped, not knowing what I wanted.
She stroked Grace’s hair, gentle as a whisper. “She’s stable now. You can sit, if you want.”
I took the chair in the corner. I watched the machines, the numbers, the slow rise and fall of Grace’s chest. Every so often, Bella would look up, catch my gaze, then return her attention to the baby.
We stayed that way for hours, saying nothing.
When morning came, I stood to leave. Bella reached for my hand, just for a second, and squeezed.
“Thank you,” she said.
The words lingered, not as an invitation, but as a closing line.
I left the hospital and drove home to my apartment. I slept until noon.
In the dream, I was always outside the glass, watching a family I didn’t deserve.
But I kept showing up.
It was the only way I could think to start over.