6 - SHATTERED GLASS
The Beckley Register-Herald didn't run the story, but they didn't have to.
By Thanksgiving, every soul in Raleigh County knew what had happened in the Carter house on Oakwood Drive.
The tale had traveled faster than any newspaper could carry it—from Mrs. Henderson's landline to the prayer circle at First Baptist to the break room at FCI Beckley to the checkout line at the Piggly Wiggly.
At five months pregnant, her belly was a proclamation.
The maternity coat she'd ordered online—navy blue, with a cinched waist that accentuated her bump—announced her condition to anyone who glanced her way.
And people glanced. They stared. They whispered behind cupped hands in the produce aisle while Victoria examined avocados, her wedding ring conspicuously absent from her left hand.
She'd stopped wearing it the week Joey filed for divorce.
The morning of December third dawned gray and cold, the kind of Appalachian winter morning that seeped through window frames and settled in the bones.
Victoria stood at the kitchen counter in one of Brock's flannel shirts—it barely buttoned over her belly now—and watched the frost crawl across the back porch.
The coffee maker gurgled behind her. Decaf, because Dr. Chen had been firm about caffeine consumption, and Victoria had become obsessive about following medical advice.
This baby was going to be perfect. She'd make sure of it.
Brock's arms circled her from behind. His hands—those large, calloused hands that had spent thirty years restraining inmates and restoring engines—came to rest on the curve of her stomach.
His lips found the side of her neck, just below her ear, and Victoria leaned back into the solid warmth of his chest.
"Morning," he murmured against her skin.
"Morning."
"You've been standing here for ten minutes. What are you thinking about?"
Victoria turned in his arms. His gray eyes were still soft with sleep, his dark hair mussed, his jaw rough with stubble he hadn't yet shaved. The sight of him—this man who had been her secret and was now her everything—still made her chest tight.
"The ultrasound," she said. "Today we find out if it's a boy or a girl."
"You nervous?"
"Excited. Nervous." She pressed her palm to her belly.
The baby had been kicking all morning, restless, as if it knew something important was coming.
"I keep thinking about names. I've had a girl's name picked out for years—Amelia, after my grandmother. But if it's a boy, I don't know. I haven't let myself think about boy names."
"Brock Jr. has a ring to it."
Victoria laughed. The sound surprised her—laughter still felt foreign sometimes, a language she was relearning after months of silence and secrets. "Brock Jr.? Really?"
"My father was a Brock. His father was a Brock. It's a tradition." His hands slid lower, cupping the underside of her belly through the flannel. "Besides, this kid is going to need a strong name. With everything people are going to say about him."
The laughter faded. That was the other thing about mornings—the way reality always crept back in, no matter how tightly Victoria tried to hold onto the small, good moments.
—
People had been saying plenty already.
Joey had made sure of that.
He'd moved in with a friend from the accounting firm, a bachelor who lived in a cramped apartment near the interstate, and he'd started talking.
At first, it had been quiet—confiding in coworkers, calling his cousin in Charleston, the kind of grief-driven confession that Victoria could almost forgive.
But as the weeks passed, the talking had curdled into something else. Something sharper.
He'd posted on Facebook. Long, rambling paragraphs that Victoria's sister had screenshotted and texted to her with a string of horrified emojis.
He'd called her a whore. He'd called Brock a predator.
He'd claimed Brock had groomed her, manipulated her, taken advantage of her vulnerability during the fertility treatments.
He'd told strangers on the internet about his low sperm count, his failed IVF, his wife's betrayal with his own father.
The posts always came late at night. They were always deleted by morning.
But the damage lingered.
"Did you see what he wrote last night?" Victoria asked. She pulled away from Brock and reached for her phone on the counter. The screen lit up with a notification—another text from her sister, another screenshot, another late-night missive from Joey's unraveling mind.
Brock's jaw tightened. "I saw."
"He called you a monster. He said you should be investigated. He tagged the prison. He tagged the warden."
"I know." Brock's voice was steady, but Victoria could hear the tension beneath it. "I talked to the warden this morning. He's aware of the situation. He said as long as it's just Facebook posts, there's nothing they can do."
"And if it's not just Facebook posts?"
Brock's gray eyes met hers. In them, Victoria saw the same fear she'd been carrying for weeks—the fear that Joey's grief was curdling into something worse than words. The fear that the man she'd married was becoming someone she didn't recognize.
"Then I'll protect you," Brock said. "I'll protect both of you. That's my job now."
He'd changed the locks the day after Joey left. He'd started carrying a firearm, a compact Glock that he'd been licensed to carry for years but had never felt the need to keep loaded until now.
Victoria had protested at first. It felt excessive.
Paranoid. But Brock had sat her down at the kitchen table and explained, in the calm, measured tones of a man who'd spent his career assessing threats, that Joey's behavior fit a pattern he'd seen before.
The spiraling. The blame. The late-night posts.
The refusal to accept that the relationship was over.
"He's not dangerous," Victoria had said. "He's just hurting."
"Those aren't mutually exclusive," Brock had replied. And Victoria hadn't been able to argue.
—
The morning passed in the quiet rituals they'd developed over the past six weeks.
Brock made breakfast—scrambled eggs and toast, the only thing Victoria could reliably stomach—while Victoria reviewed the paperwork her lawyer had sent over.
The divorce was proceeding faster than expected.
Joey was contesting nothing, fighting nothing, just signing whatever documents appeared in front of him with a scrawl that grew more erratic with each filing.
Guilt gnawed at Victoria's stomach. Not the baby—the baby was fine, the baby was perfect—but guilt, real guilt, the kind that lived in the back of her throat and made every meal taste like ash.
She'd done this to Joey. She'd broken him.
And she couldn't even bring herself to regret it, because regret would mean regretting Brock, regretting the baby, regretting the future that was finally taking shape.
She didn't regret any of that.
She regretted the way it had happened. The lies.
The garage. The neighbors watching. She regretted that Joey had found out the way he did, that he'd seen them, that the image of his father's body joined with hers was probably seared into his memory forever.
She regretted that she hadn't been brave enough to tell him sooner.
But she didn't regret Brock. She didn't regret this baby. And she didn't regret the strange, unexpected happiness that had bloomed in the wreckage of her old life.
"Ready to go?" Brock stood in the kitchen doorway, his keys in hand, his jacket zipped against the cold.
Victoria set down the paperwork. Looked at the man she loved. Nodded.
"Ready."
Dr. Chen's office hadn't changed—the same lavender walls, the same paper-covered table, the same ultrasound machine that had shown Victoria her baby's profile at twelve weeks.
But this time, Victoria walked in with her head high.
This time, Brock walked beside her, his hand on the small of her back.
This time, the receptionist didn't ask about Joey.
Didn't mention the missed appointments. Didn't say a word about the gossip that had consumed half the county.
Dr. Chen was waiting in the exam room. Her dark ponytail was sleek as ever, her white coat immaculate, her sharp eyes giving nothing away.
But Victoria had learned to read the subtle cues—the way Dr. Chen's gaze lingered on Brock, the way her professional mask flickered with something that might have been curiosity or judgment or simply the clinical satisfaction of observing a story unfold.
"Twenty weeks," Dr. Chen said, pulling up Victoria's chart on the computer. "The halfway point. How are you feeling?"
"Good. Better. The nausea is completely gone."
"Appetite?"
"Ravenous." Victoria laughed. "I ate a whole jar of pickles last week. Brock had to go out at midnight to buy more."
"It's a cliché for a reason," Dr. Chen said, and Victoria caught the ghost of a smile. "Let's take a look at your baby."
The ultrasound gel was cold against Victoria's belly—it was always cold—and the wand traced familiar paths across her stretched skin. The screen flickered to life. And there it was.
Not a blur anymore. Not a profile, not a shadow, not a possibility.
A baby.
The head was round and perfect. The spine curved in a graceful crescent.
The arms and legs were longer now, the fingers and toes distinct, and the baby was moving—squirming, really, like it knew it was being watched and wanted to put on a show.
The heartbeat filled the room with its rapid, rhythmic whoosh.
"There's your baby," Dr. Chen said. "Measuring right at twenty weeks. Heartbeat's strong. Everything looks exactly the way it should."
Brock's hand found Victoria's. Squeezed.
"Are you ready to know the sex?" Dr. Chen asked.
Victoria looked at Brock. Brock looked at Victoria. A whole conversation passed between them in the space of a heartbeat—a conversation about names, about futures, about the child they were going to raise together.
"Yes," Victoria said. "We're ready."
Dr. Chen moved the wand. The screen adjusted. The baby squirmed, and Victoria watched the gray shapes shift and resolve into something new.