Untitled Part 4
"She's always going to be by his side."
"So whether you want to see her or not doesn't matter—unless you divorce Ethan."
I looked at her and asked quietly,
"You keep pushing me to divorce him because you want to remarry him, don't you?"
Her face changed at once.
"What nonsense are you talking about?"
She and Ethan had the same bad temper.
After they got married, they'd fought constantly until the marriage finally fell apart.
I had hit a nerve.
Under normal circumstances, with her personality, she would have exploded and started screaming at me.
But Daisy reached over and took her hand, not looking at either of us.
"Mom," she said softly, "take me with you."
Vanessa left with Daisy.
The nanny knelt to clean up the shattered pieces on the floor.
"You can't even tell what it used to be now," she murmured.
"These past two days, Daisy's been holding onto it constantly. She even slept with it in her hand."
During the few days I stayed home recovering, Ethan never came back once.
When I returned to the office, I didn't see him there, either.
I was just another low-level employee at his company.
No one knew what he and I were to each other.
At lunch, people started talking about him.
"Do you think Mr. Sterling's getting back together with Director Sterling?"
"What makes you say that?"
"They took Daisy on vacation together and they still haven't come back. If they can travel as a family for that many days, they must be getting along pretty well."
I stared blankly at my computer screen.
So Ethan had gone away with Vanessa and Daisy again.
One of the women talking had Vanessa on social media.
She pulled up Vanessa's latest post and showed the rest of us.
Location: Walt Disney World, Orlando.
There was a nine-photo grid.
In several of them, the three of them were posing together.
They looked exactly like a family of three, easy and natural, as if nothing had ever changed.
The last clip was a live photo.
Someone passing by accidentally bumped Vanessa's shoulder.
Ethan reached out instinctively and put an arm around her.
Everyone around me started cooing and gossiping at once.
"My power-couple fantasy just came to life."
"I don't care how many pretty women there are in this company, Director Sterling is still the only one who really matches Mr. Sterling."
"They have that perfect equal-parts push-and-pull thing. It's so obvious with those two."
A coworker nudged my arm.
"Claire, stop looking at your phone."
"Tell me honestly—am I right? They look perfect together, don't they?"
The last message in my chat with Ethan was still the one from before I lost the baby.