The Night He Abandoned Me in Labor (The Wives They Wronged #1)

Chapter 1

Nora

The contraction started while Julian was reaching for his keys.

This one reached around my back and pulled hard.

Julian stopped with his hand over the ceramic bowl by the door. He watched me bow my head, but his phone was already pressed to his ear.

“When did you last see her?” he asked.

Serena’s crying carried across the room.

I counted under my breath. The pain climbed, held, then began to loosen after fifty-three seconds. I straightened slowly. Rain rattled against the windows, smearing the lights from the neighboring houses into yellow streaks.

“Julian.”

He lifted one finger without looking at me.

“Did you call the school?” he asked Serena. “What about her friends?”

His voice had changed. It always did when Serena called with a crisis—calm, clipped, already halfway to solving it.

In eighteen months, there had been a dead car battery, a broken furnace, a leaking kitchen pipe, a panic attack at a birthday party, and more problems involving Ellie than I could count. Julian had an answer for all of them.

Tonight, according to the pieces I could hear, eight-year-old Ellie had not come home from school. Her phone was off. Serena couldn’t find her.

That was frightening. I knew it was frightening.

I also knew what was happening inside my body.

“This is the third one,” I said. “They’re getting closer.”

Julian turned away from me and walked toward the front window. “I’m coming. Stay by the phone.”

“Wait.”

He ended the call and took his keys from the bowl.

“This one is different,” I said. “We need to go to the hospital now.”

For one second, he looked torn. Then the competent expression settled over his face—the one his employees probably found reassuring, the one that had once made me feel safe.

“Ellie’s missing.”

“I heard.”

“She never came home. Serena’s been driving the route from school.”

“Has she called the school?”

“I don’t know.”

“The police?”

“Nora.”

“Her father?”

His mouth tightened. “I’m going to find out.”

I picked up my phone from the table. “Call them now. Call her friends’ parents. I’ll call too. You can take me to the hospital on the way—it’s twelve minutes from here. Drop me at the entrance and keep looking.”

The plan was so obvious I expected him to agree before I finished speaking. Instead, he glanced at the clock on the wall.

“If she’s actually missing, every minute matters.”

“Then use the twelve minutes. Make calls while we drive.”

“And if the hospital sends us home again?”

The question landed with more force than the contraction had.

Two weeks earlier, I had woken him at three in the morning because the pressure in my pelvis came in waves and I had been sure something was wrong.

We spent four hours in triage before a nurse told us the contractions were irregular and sent us home.

Six days later, I had called him out of a meeting.

The tightening stopped before he reached the house.

False labor, both times. False had become Julian’s favorite word for it, as if I had invented the pain instead of misunderstood it.

“They won’t,” I said.

“You said that last time.”

I stared at him.

He rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. “I’m not saying you don’t feel anything. But you’re thirty-eight weeks. You’ve been having contractions on and off for days.”

“Not like these.”

“Let me make sure Ellie is safe. If you’re still having them when I get back, we’ll go in.”

Outside, the rain came down harder. Water raced along the curb beneath the streetlights.

Our car sat in the driveway, silver and clean and already packed.

Three days ago, Julian had loaded the hospital bag into the trunk himself.

He had checked every item against the list on his phone: my robe, the baby’s going-home clothes, his sweatshirt, chargers, toiletries, the folder with our insurance information and birth preferences.

He had been proud of being ready.

“I am still having them,” I said. “I’ve been timing them for almost an hour.”

He looked at my phone as if the numbers there needed his approval.

“How far apart?”

“Eleven minutes, then nine.”

“That isn’t five minutes.”

“They’re stronger. The nurse said to pay attention to intensity too.”

“And she also said to call before we drove over.”

“So I’ll call from the car.”

Another pause. Another glance at the door.

I had spent most of my marriage smoothing moments like this before they could become arguments. I could hear the old sentences waiting for me: Go. I’ll be fine. She needs you. We would both know I didn’t mean them, and Julian would kiss my forehead, grateful for my reasonableness.

I put my phone down.

“I need you to take me to the hospital now.”

The words felt bare without an apology wrapped around them.

His eyes came back to mine.

“I’m asking you directly,” I said. “Please take me.”

“Nora, a child may be missing.”

“And your daughter may be coming.”

He flinched, but it did not move his feet toward me.

I pointed through the wall toward the driveway. “Our bag is in your car.”

“I’ll be back in half an hour.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Serena is ten minutes away. I’ll check the school route, make some calls, and come straight back.”

“Take the bag out.”

He exhaled. “You’re not going anywhere before I get back.”

I watched his certainty arrive before mine could matter.

“How do you know?”

“Because if this is real, it’s early. First labors take hours.” He picked up his coat. “Call your doctor. Once they confirm it, call me.”

Once they confirm it.

He shrugged into his coat, then came close enough to touch my arm. I stepped back.

“Don’t,” I said.

His hand stopped in the space between us.

For the first time, his calm slipped. “I can’t leave an eight-year-old out there because you might be in labor.”

“You can drive twelve minutes in the other direction first.”

“That could be twelve minutes she doesn’t have.”

“Then call the police.”

“I will, from the car.”

I looked at the man I had married, dressed for an emergency that belonged to someone else.

He had changed out of his work clothes after dinner and was wearing the gray sweater I had bought him last Christmas.

There was a faint damp mark near one cuff from washing the dishes.

Ordinary evidence of the life we had been living half an hour ago.

“If you go,” I said, “at least leave me the bag.”

He looked toward the rain, impatience tightening his face. “I said I’ll be back.”

Then he opened the door.

Cold air swept into the house. I wrapped one arm under my belly as he ran through the rain. The car lights flashed when he unlocked it. For a moment, I thought he would open the trunk.

He got into the driver’s seat instead.

I stood in the doorway, barefoot on the entry rug, and watched the car reverse.

The red taillights streaked across the wet pavement.

In the trunk were the clothes I had chosen for our daughter’s first trip home, the soft nursing bra my sister told me to buy, and the folder in which Julian had neatly printed FATHER: JULIAN MERCER.

The car turned at the end of the street and disappeared.

I closed the door.

The house became very quiet without him. The clock in the living room clicked. The refrigerator hummed. Rain tapped against the roof, steady and indifferent.

I picked up my phone and called the obstetric triage line.

While I waited through the recorded message, I opened the contraction timer again. The next one began before a nurse answered.

“Labor and delivery, this is Megan.”

“Hi.” I braced a hand against the wall. “I’m thirty-eight weeks. My contractions were eleven minutes apart, then nine, and this one is—”

Pain closed over the sentence. My knees hit the entry rug, one hand still locked around the phone.

“Don’t try to talk,” she said. “Breathe through it. I’ll stay here.”

I folded over my raised knee. The pressure drove low through my pelvis, sharper than before, and I had the sudden sensation that my body had become a door being forced open.

“That’s it,” Megan said. “Slow breath out.”

I did what she told me because she sounded as if she believed I had called for a reason.

When the contraction eased, I looked at the timer. “One minute, seven seconds.”

“Any bleeding?”

“No.”

“Did your water break?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Is baby moving normally?”

I waited, one hand spread over the side of my stomach. A firm roll answered beneath my palm.

“Yes.”

“Good. Are you alone?”

I looked at the closed front door. “Yes.”

The word came out small. I said it again, clearly.

“Yes. My husband left.”

Megan did not ask why. She asked my address, my doctor’s name, whether I felt pressure like I needed to push, and how long it would take me to reach the hospital. When I told her ten to fifteen minutes, she said I needed to come in now.

“Do you have someone who can drive you?”

My sister lived forty minutes away. Calling her would mean waiting, explaining, listening to the alarm enter her voice.

Julian had said half an hour. If I called him, he would ask whether the nurse had confirmed it, and then I would have to use the right words in the right order before he decided I qualified.

“No,” I said. “I can get a cab in a few minutes.”

“That’s okay if you aren’t bleeding heavily, you aren’t pushing, and the car is close. If anything changes while you wait, call 911. Can you unlock the door and sit somewhere near it?”

“Yes.”

“Call us back if you need to. We’ll let the front desk know you’re coming.”

After we hung up, I opened the ride app. The nearest driver was four minutes away.

I added the hospital as the destination, then stood in the entryway trying to decide what a woman took to have a baby when her hospital bag was traveling toward another family.

My purse. My phone charger from the kitchen. A sweater.

I went upstairs for clean underwear and stopped halfway down again when a gush of warm fluid soaked through my leggings.

For one stunned second, I stared at the darkened fabric.

Then I sat on the stair and called triage back.

Megan answered again. She asked about color, movement, pressure. The fluid was clear. The baby moved when I pressed my hand to my belly. I did not feel the urge to push.

“Your water may have broken,” she said. “Come straight in. If the pressure changes or you feel unsafe getting into the cab, call 911.”

“Okay.”

I changed with clumsy hands, shoved the wet clothes into the empty laundry basket, and put two towels into a canvas grocery tote.

The absurdity of it almost made me laugh.

Julian had packed three kinds of newborn diapers after comparing reviews.

I was going to the hospital with a phone charger and towels from our guest bathroom.

Headlights swept across the front window.

I pulled on my raincoat and stepped onto the porch as the driver hurried around the hood of a blue sedan. He was maybe sixty, with silver at his temples and a knit cap pulled low over his ears.

“Nora?”

“Yes.”

He looked at the bag in my hand, then at the way I was holding my stomach. “Are you in labor?”

The old answer rose automatically.

I swallowed it.

“Yes,” I said. “My water broke. I need help getting to the car.”

“Okay.” He opened the rear door and moved the seat forward to give me more room. No questions about whether I was sure. No reminder that women had false alarms. “Take my arm. We’ll go slow.”

His name was Luis, according to the app. He kept one hand steady beneath my elbow as I crossed the slick walkway. Rain struck the hood and streamed over the windshield. He helped me onto the towel I had brought, waited until both my feet were inside, then closed the door carefully.

“Which entrance?” he asked as he got behind the wheel.

“Labor and delivery. East side.”

“I’ll call the desk when we’re close. You want the heat up?”

“Please.”

He turned it up.

Another contraction began as we pulled away from the curb. Luis noticed me brace my hand against the seat.

“Starting now?”

I nodded.

He tapped the dashboard clock. “I’ll time it. You do what you need to do.”

Streetlights passed in blurred gold bars. I breathed out and watched the numbers change on the clock. Luis drove quickly without making the car lurch. At the next red light, he glanced at me in the mirror.

“Fifty seconds so far.”

“Thank you.”

Two words, and my voice nearly failed on them.

He looked back at the road. “Hospital knows you’re coming?”

“The nurse does.”

“Good. We’ll be there in nine minutes.”

Nine minutes. He did not tell me it was a long time or a short time. He did not decide someone else’s fear outweighed the pain happening in my body. He only believed the answer I gave him and adjusted what he was doing.

When the contraction released me, I took out my phone.

There were no messages from Julian.

The location-sharing app still showed his car because we had turned it on weeks ago for the drive to the hospital. A small silver icon moved north, away from downtown, away from the blue dot that marked me. Serena’s neighborhood lay in that direction.

We reached the main road. Luis turned toward the hospital.

Julian’s car kept going the other way, carrying everything we had packed for the moment we became parents.

Another contraction gathered low in my back.

I placed the phone facedown on my knee.

This time, I did not watch to see when he would turn around.