CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
ISABELLA
I cannot sleep, but it is not because Richard may have tampered with Alexander’s test results, because there is now an investigation involving a family capable of moving billions before breakfast, or because my former fiancé, current husband by contract, and the father of my daughter spent years believing a lie fabricated by his own uncle.
I cannot sleep because Alexander said the reports were false, but the choice he made was real.
I believe him, and that may be the worst part.
It would have been much easier if he had seized the fraud as an opportunity for absolution.
I could have hated him for that cowardice and placed Richard in a separate category reserved for monsters who manipulate medical results and human lives for money.
Instead, Alexander refused the escape offered to him.
At three twenty, I give up staring at the ceiling and get out of bed. Seven minutes later, I walk into the kitchen and find Alexander sitting at the table with his laptop open, an untouched mug beside him, and the pages of the report spread out in front of him.
Of course he is not sleeping either.
“You too?” I ask.
“Me too.”
I open the refrigerator, stare inside without knowing what I am looking for, then close it again. I do not want food or water. I only wanted to stop being alone with my thoughts.
I sit opposite him.
“Have they found anything else?”
“The team is tracing the companies connected to Merrick and trying to locate the doctor who signed the reports.”
“At three in the morning?”
“I have people working in New York.”
“You always have people somewhere.”
“Sometimes it helps.”
I look down at the documents.
“You’re still not going to confront Richard.”
It is not a question.
“Not until we have enough evidence to prevent him from destroying records or preparing an alternative version of events.”
“Is waiting difficult?”
A humorless smile touches his mouth.
“Very.”
I run one finger along the edge of a page.
“If Richard did all of this, he began planning it years before you ever met me.”
“Yes.”
“So I was only an accident in his plan.”
The conclusion leaves me strangely hollow, as though our tragedy began inside an equation where neither of us existed as a person.
Alexander closes the laptop.
“You weren’t an accident. You were a variable Richard couldn’t control.”
“That is much more romantic.”
“I wasn’t trying to be romantic.”
“Good.”
We sit in silence for a while before I ask, “Do you know what the worst part is?”
He waits.
“I wanted everything to be Richard’s fault.”
Alexander’s expression changes.
“So did I.”
My throat tightens.
“When you showed me the report, I felt relieved for a second. If Richard had done everything, perhaps I could take the last five years, put them in a box with his name on it, and decide that he was the one who lied, manipulated us, and destroyed our life.”
Alexander does not move.
“Then you said the choice had still been yours.”
“Because it was.”
“I know, and I hate that it was.”
Tears fill my eyes, irritating me with their persistence. Alexander does not try to comfort me, perhaps because he understands that any movement might bring the conversation to an end.
“I still wanted you,” I confess.
He becomes completely still.
I do not know why I continue. Perhaps the report opened a door, and if we are going to tear the lie out by its roots, I need to remove the things that have been rotting inside me too.
“I already told you that I waited for the first few weeks after I left your house. What I didn’t tell you was that I kept waiting when my stomach began to show, when I chose the flat, and when I bought the cot.”
Alexander lowers his eyes.
“I assembled furniture for the baby while imagining you walking through the door. I was furious with myself because you had called me a liar and said that horrible thing to me, but I still pictured you being there when I gave birth.”
My voice begins to break.
“I had a second hospital bag packed.”
He looks up.
“A second bag?”
A laugh escapes through my tears.
“For you. There was one of your shirts folded in Clara’s wardrobe because you always complained about how cold hospitals were.”
Alexander raises a hand to his mouth.
“Isabella…”
“When my waters broke, my first instinct was to reach for my phone. I knew you wouldn’t come, but for a few seconds I thought about calling you.”
He rises so quickly that the chair scrapes against the floor. My body tenses, and Alexander stops immediately.
“May I come closer?”
“No.”
He nods and sits again.
Even devastated, he respects my answer. That matters more than I would like it to.
“I didn’t call because I didn’t want the first act of our daughter’s life to be watching me beg her father to appear.”
Alexander is struggling to breathe.
“You should never have needed to beg.”
“No.”
I close my eyes for a moment.
“When Lily was born, she had your mouth. My mother noticed before I did and told me I was exhausted, that I probably saw the resemblance because I was still thinking about you.”
“But you weren’t imagining it.”
“No.”
I look directly at him.
“I stared at our daughter and thought that you had missed it. I didn’t think I had won, and I wasn’t pleased that you weren’t there. All I could think was, He missed this.”
Tears run down Alexander’s face, and he makes no attempt to hide them.
“I felt sorry for you, even after everything.”
“I didn’t deserve that.”
“I know, but feelings don’t ask whether someone deserves them.”
The silence makes the kitchen feel too small.
Alexander rests his forearms on his knees.
“There’s something else I need to tell you.”
I wait, already afraid of the answer.
“When I told you there were times I nearly went to Clara’s after you left, I didn’t tell you how close I came. Near the end of the pregnancy, I actually went back.”
My entire body stiffens.
“You came when I was close to giving birth?”
“Yes. I knew roughly when you were due.”
“When?”
“During the week Lily was expected, I spent two nights sitting in the car outside the building.”
Cold spreads through me.
“You were outside again?”
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t knock on the door.”
“No.”
Anger arrives tangled with pain. I stand and begin pacing because I cannot remain seated.
“I was nine months pregnant, climbing three flights of stairs and carrying your daughter while you sat in a car outside the building?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Alexander is crying now without any trace of control.
“Because I still believed that if I went inside and discovered the baby wasn’t mine, I wouldn’t survive it.”
“And what about me?”
The question tears through my throat.
“What was I supposed to survive?”
“I know.”
“You don’t know!”
I strike the counter with my palm.
“You sat outside protecting your own heart while I prepared to walk into a delivery room alone. You had opportunity after opportunity, and every time you chose not to cross a door.”
“Yes.”
Part of me wants Alexander to defend himself because it would be easier to hate him if he turned this into an argument. Instead, he stays in his chair and accepts every word.
“I can’t change any of those nights,” he says.
“No.”
“But I also won’t hide the parts of myself that may make you hate me.”
My anger falters.
“Why?”
“Because you deserve to know the whole truth before you decide anything about the man I am now. If knowing this makes you hate me more, I’ll accept that.”
“Don’t turn yourself into a martyr.”
“I’m not trying to.”
“It sounds like you are.”
He wipes his face.
“A martyr believes suffering makes him good. I’m only trying to stop being the man who chooses whichever version of the truth hurts him least.”
The words reach me because that is exactly what Alexander did five years ago. He chose the version that protected his pride and rejected every piece of information capable of contradicting it.
Now he is voluntarily giving me the truth that condemns him most.
I should leave the kitchen.
Instead, I return to the table and sit down, though I keep the distance between us.
“I have nothing else to say tonight.”
“All right.”
“I don’t want to discuss this tomorrow either.”
“All right.”
“And don’t apologize again tonight.”
“I won’t.”
I look at him.
“You’re becoming irritatingly obedient.”
“I’ve been told I need to learn.”
I almost smile, but exhaustion wins.
We remain seated as the darkness beyond the windows begins to fade. There is no touch, no promise, and no forgiveness between us, only the truth shared without defense.
Perhaps that is even more dangerous, because it has another name.
Intimacy.