3. Hannah
HANNAH
I was still waiting when they called the first appointment after mine.
The doctor's office always ran late, but I kept hoping.
Maybe traffic had snarled him up. Maybe the meeting ran over.
Maybe he'd just lost track of time and would come rushing through the door any second, apologetic and a little out of breath the way he used to be when we were first married and he still made the effort to show up for things.
I checked my phone for the third time in five minutes. Nothing. No text, no missed call, no explanation. Just the lock screen with the photo of the two of us from our honeymoon, back when he still looked at me like I was the most important thing in his world.
The waiting room had emptied out around me, filled back up again with different faces.
A younger woman sat across from me with her hand resting on a belly smaller than mine, her husband next to her flipping through a magazine without reading it.
An older couple sat near the window, the man's arm draped over the back of his wife's chair.
Everyone else had someone. I was the only one sitting alone.
My hands rested on the curve of my stomach, the wedding ring catching the light every time I shifted. I'd asked him two days ago to come with me. At the shower he'd glanced at his watch and said, "Let me see how the week goes, and I'll let you know."
That wasn't a promise.
I knew that. I'd known it when he said it, and known it last night when the evening ended and the appointment never came up. But God, I'd wanted it to be.
A nurse appeared in the doorway with a clipboard, glancing around the waiting room. "Hannah Langford?"
I stood up, smoothing my shirt over the bump that had gotten impossible to hide.
The fabric pulled tight across my middle no matter what I wore now.
I grabbed my purse and followed the nurse back, past the scale and the blood pressure cuff, past the exam rooms where I could hear other doctors talking to other patients who probably hadn't come alone.
The nurse was kind. She smiled while she took my weight and my blood pressure, chatted about the weather and asked how I was feeling. I told her I was fine, and she nodded like she believed me, and then she left me sitting on the exam table with the paper crinkling under me every time I moved.
The appointment was quick. Routine. The doctor came in with the same easy professionalism she always had, asked me the same questions she'd asked last month, listened to the baby's heartbeat with the doppler pressed to my stomach.
The sound filled the small room, fast and strong and steady, and I felt my throat go tight.
"Perfect," the doctor said, smiling. "Everything sounds great, Hannah. You're right on track."
"Good," I managed. My voice came out smaller than I wanted it to.
She glanced at me, then at the empty chair in the corner where Pierce should have been sitting.
She didn't say anything about it. Maybe she'd seen it before.
Maybe it didn't matter. She went through the rest of the checklist, told me to keep doing what I was doing, and scheduled my next appointment for four weeks out.
I dressed behind the curtain and thanked her and walked back out through the waiting room, smiling at the receptionist like everything was fine, like I'd planned it this way all along.
My car was hot when I slid into it, the steering wheel almost too warm to touch.
I sat there for a minute with the engine running and the air conditioning blasting, staring at nothing.
Pierce would have liked to hear the heartbeat.
He would have. If he'd been there, he would have smiled at the sound of it, would have reached for my hand, would have asked the doctor all the questions I never thought to ask because I was too busy trying not to cry.
But he wasn't there, so it didn't matter.
I pulled out of the parking lot and headed home.
The drive took twenty minutes, long enough for me to get my face under control.
I wasn't going to walk in looking like I'd been crying, because I hadn't been.
I was fine. This was fine. Pierce had work, and work mattered, and I'd always known that about him when I married him.
It wasn't a surprise. It was just the way things were.
His car was in the driveway when I pulled up.
Relief hit me first, sharp and immediate, before I could stop it. He was home. He'd come back. Maybe he'd realized he'd missed the appointment and felt bad about it. Maybe he wanted to hear how it went, wanted to make sure I was okay, wanted to?—
I cut the thought off before it could finish. I was being ridiculous. He was probably just between meetings. Or he'd forgotten something. Or he had a call scheduled and it was easier to take it from home than from the office.
I let myself in through the front door, my purse heavy on my shoulder and my shoes already pinching.
The house was quiet except for the low murmur of Pierce's voice coming from his office down the hall.
He was on a call. Of course he was. I stood there in the entryway for a minute, listening to the easy confidence in his tone, the way he laughed at something the person on the other end said.
When the call ended I heard him moving around, the creak of his chair, the rustle of papers.
I walked toward the office, my heartbeat picking up for no reason I could name.
He glanced up when I appeared in the doorway, his jacket off and his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and he smiled at me the way he always did. Warm and distracted at the same time.
"Hey," he said. "Sorry, that call ran long."
My throat tightened. He didn't remember.
Or he did remember, but not enough to realize he'd missed it.
Not enough to care that I'd been sitting there alone while everyone else had someone with them.
I forced myself to sound normal, to keep my voice steady.
"The appointment went fine. Everything's good. "
"Mm." He looked back down at the papers on his desk, his pen already moving again.
I should have left it there. I should have walked away and let it drop and gone upstairs to lie down the way I'd been wanting to all morning. But I couldn't. The words came up before I could stop them, before I could think about whether this was the right time or the right way to say it.
"Pierce, I need to talk to you about Sienna."
That got his attention. He set the pen down and leaned back in his chair, one eyebrow raised. "What about her?"
"She doesn't treat me the way she should." I stepped into the office, my hands twisting together in front of me. "At the shower, she acted like I was in her way. Like I was some kind of obstacle she had to work around instead of the person the shower was for."
Pierce frowned, but it wasn't the kind of frown that meant he believed me.
It was the kind that meant he was already working out how to explain why I was wrong.
"Hannah, Sienna's job is to make sure everything runs smoothly.
Sometimes that means she's focused on the details instead of the people. It's not personal."
"It felt personal."
"Because you're making a mountain out of an anthill.
" He said it gently, the way you'd talk to a child who was upset over something small.
Like he was trying to calm me down. Like I was the one being unreasonable.
"Sienna's been handling our events for years.
She's good at what she does. If she seemed short with you, it's because she was busy keeping everything on track. "
I wanted to tell him that wasn't it. That he was missing the point.
That Sienna smiled at him and answered his questions and acted like the perfect professional whenever he was in the room, and then turned cold the second he looked away.
But I didn't know how to say that without sounding jealous or paranoid or like I was the problem.
"She makes me feel like I don't belong," I said instead. My voice came out quieter than I meant it to. "In my own life."
Pierce sighed, rubbing a hand over his face. "Look, I get that you're stressed right now. You're pregnant, your hormones are all over the place?—"
"Don't," I said quietly, and let out a slow breath.
His phone rang.
He glanced at the screen, and I saw the flicker of recognition in his eyes before he looked back at me. Apologetic but firm. "Hold on. I need to take this."
"Pierce—"
"Just give me a minute, okay?" He was already swiping to answer, his voice shifting into that easy professional register he used for work calls. "Sienna, hey. What's going on?"
I stood there like an idiot while he listened to whatever she was saying.
He nodded, even though she couldn't see him, and reached across his desk to pull a folder closer.
The conversation wasn't urgent. It wasn't an emergency.
I could tell from his tone, from the way he leaned back in his chair and half-smiled at something she said.
It was just Sienna, calling because she could, and Pierce answering because he always did.
"Yeah, that works," he said into the phone. "No, I can be there in twenty minutes. It's not a problem."
He didn't look at me.
I turned and walked out of the office before I could do something stupid like cry or yell or ask him why Sienna's time mattered more than mine. My pulse hammered in my throat, and my hands were shaking, and I hated that I was this upset over something so small. But it wasn't small. Not to me.
Behind me, I heard Pierce laugh at something Sienna said. The sound carried down the hall, light and easy, like I hadn't just been standing there trying to tell him something that mattered.
I went upstairs.
The nursery wasn't a nursery yet. It was just an empty room with good light and a pale wood floor, the walls still the same generic beige they'd been when we moved in six years ago.
I'd been talking about this room since the day I found out I was pregnant.
I'd told Pierce yesterday exactly how I wanted it to look.
Soft colors, nothing too bold or busy. A bookshelf low enough for a child to reach when they got older.
Space for a rug in the middle of the floor where the baby could sit and play.
He'd nodded while I talked. I wasn't sure he'd actually heard me.
I had the planning papers with me, in the folder I'd taken off the kitchen counter on my way up.
I'd printed pictures from websites, drawn little sketches of how the furniture could be arranged, written lists of what we'd need and when we'd need it.
I'd spent hours on it, trying to get it right, trying to make sure I had everything figured out so that when I showed it to Pierce he'd see how much this mattered to me.
I held the folder and looked at it for a long time.
The pages were wrinkled and wouldn't lie flat, but every detail was thought through, every question answered.
It was the kind of planning I used to do for my classroom at the start of every school year, back when I was still teaching.
Back when I had something that was mine.
Downstairs, I heard the front door close. Pierce's car started up in the driveway, the engine a low rumble that faded as he pulled out onto the street and drove away.
He hadn't come to find me. He hadn't called up the stairs to say he was leaving or to ask if I needed anything or to tell me when he'd be back. He'd just gone, the same way he always did, because Sienna had needed him and I was here and I wasn't going anywhere.
I closed the folder and slid it onto the windowsill, tucked behind the curtain where it wouldn't be in anyone's way.
The house felt too big and too quiet around me. I stood in the empty nursery for another minute, my hand resting on my stomach, feeling the baby shift and settle inside me. Then I turned and walked out, pulling the door shut behind me.
In the bedroom, I grabbed my purse from where I'd dropped it on the bed.
My keys were still in my hand from earlier, the metal warm against my palm.
I didn't let myself think about it too hard.
I just went back downstairs and out to my car, the house silent and empty behind me like it didn't even notice I was leaving.
The drive to Julia's wasn't long. Twenty-five minutes, maybe thirty depending on traffic.
I'd made it a hundred times, back when I still taught, back when Julia and I would grab dinner after school or meet up on weekends to plan lessons together.
Back when I had a life that wasn't just waiting for my husband to notice me.
The road was familiar. The turns were automatic. I barely registered the scenery going past, the strip malls and the gas stations and the neighborhoods that all looked the same.
All I could think about was the way Pierce's eyes had flickered when he looked at the screen. The way he'd looked at me, apologetic but firm, like of course he had to take the call. Like it was obvious. Like there was no world in which I could possibly come first.
He'd missed the appointment. He'd waved off everything I'd tried to tell him about Sienna, made it sound like I was overreacting, like I was the problem. And then, on the same day he couldn't make time for me or the baby, he'd dropped everything the second she called.
I tightened my grip on the wheel, my wedding ring pressing into my finger hard enough to leave a mark.