Chapter 4
Naomi
The next morning, I convinced myself the worst was behind us. People didn’t spend eight years fighting for the same dream without collecting a few scars along the way.
Yesterday had been emotional. Life-changing. Terrifying. Patrick had gone from believing we might never become parents to learning we were finally having a baby, only to have someone try to poison the happiest day of our lives with an anonymous photograph.
Anyone would have been shaken. That was all this was. Shock. Fear. A moment neither of us had been prepared for. By morning, we’d find our way back to each other. We always did.
Patrick kissed my forehead before leaving for work.
“I’ll see you tonight.”
“Love you.”
“I love you too.”
His smile looked more natural than it had the night before. That alone made me breathe a little easier.
I watched him back out of the driveway before making myself breakfast. My appointment paperwork still needed collecting from the clinic, so after answering a few messages from Hannah, I drove across town.
The receptionist handed me a thick folder.
“Everything you’ll need over the next few months,” she said.
“Thank you.”
A few months. The words still sounded unreal.
I tucked the folder carefully onto the passenger seat before driving home.
The whole way, my thoughts stayed fixed on last night.
Maybe I’d overreacted. Patrick had asked a painful question, but he’d also looked devastated that he’d asked it.
He’d apologized almost immediately. He hadn’t called me a liar.
He hadn’t accused me of cheating. He’d been afraid, and there was a difference.
Fear made good people ask terrible questions.
Marriage meant giving each other room to recover from moments like that.
By the time I pulled into the driveway, I’d decided not to bring it up again. Tonight we’d celebrate properly. We’d talk about baby names. Maybe we’d finally allow ourselves to start decorating the spare bedroom we’d both pretended wasn’t a nursery waiting to happen.
I carried the folder inside and closed the front door quietly. The house was still. Patrick’s office door stood almost closed. He must have been working from home.
I smiled to myself. I’d make us coffee. Maybe we’d eat lunch together.
As I walked down the hallway, another voice drifted through the narrow gap in the office door.
Dustin.
I stopped without thinking.
“...I’m just saying you need to be smart,” Dustin said.
My grip tightened on the folder.
Patrick answered, but I couldn’t make out the words.
“If there’s even a chance that kid isn’t yours, don’t be stupid,” Dustin said. “Get a DNA test before you sign anything.”
My heart lurched. The folder slipped slightly against my arm. I barely noticed it.
I waited. Patrick was going to laugh. Tell Dustin he didn’t know Naomi. Tell him the whole thing was ridiculous. Tell him his wife deserved better than that conversation.
I stood perfectly still, waiting for my husband to defend me.
The silence on the other side of the door stretched longer than it should have.
Every second made it easier to believe I simply hadn’t heard him yet.
Patrick was choosing his words. That had to be it.
He wasn’t the kind of man who reacted without thinking.
He would tell Dustin that he’d known me for eight years, that we’d survived more together than most couples ever would, that one anonymous photograph couldn’t erase a marriage built on trust.
“I’m not trying to upset you,” Dustin said.
“I know.”
Patrick’s voice was quiet. Too quiet.
“I’m trying to stop you from making a mistake.”
“There wasn’t a mistake.”
“You don’t know that.”
My heartbeat thudded painfully against my ribs.
“You’ve seen one cropped picture and one anonymous text,” Dustin continued. “That’s enough to ask questions.”
I held my breath. This was it. Patrick would shut him down. He would tell Dustin there were no questions. He would say my name with the same certainty he’d spoken it a thousand times before.
Instead, there was another long pause. I stared at the hardwood floor, unable to move.
“I don’t know,” Patrick said finally. His voice sounded tired, confused. “I honestly don’t know what to think.”
The words hit me with almost physical force. For a moment, I forgot how to breathe.
Dustin spoke again, but I barely heard him.
“I get that she’s your wife.”
“I love her.”
“I know you do.”
“But if that baby isn’t yours, you’ll regret not protecting yourself.”
Protecting yourself. As though I were something dangerous. As though I were someone capable of destroying him.
I waited one last time. Patrick would say it now. He would tell Dustin he’d crossed a line. He would tell him his wife wasn’t the kind of woman who cheated on her husband after eight years of infertility. He would tell him he was wrong.
Instead, all I heard was Patrick exhale. A long, weary breath.
“I just need time.”
Nothing else. No defense. No certainty. No, you don’t know Naomi. No, she’d never do that.
I felt as though the floor had disappeared beneath me.
The man inside that office loved me. I knew he did.
He’d held me while I cried after every failed treatment.
He’d promised we’d face everything together.
He’d celebrated with me less than twenty-four hours earlier when we learned we were finally having a baby.
Yet when another man questioned my character, my husband couldn’t find a single reason to defend me.
I lowered my eyes to the folder clutched against my chest. Across the top, in neat black letters, were the words Prenatal Care Information. I’d carried it home smiling. Now I could barely see it through the tears filling my eyes.
I swallowed hard. Not here. I wasn’t going to cry outside his office door, not where either of them might hear me.
I took one careful step backward, then another. The floorboards creaked softly beneath my feet. I froze. The conversation inside continued uninterrupted. Neither of them had heard me.
I turned slowly and walked back down the hallway. Every step felt unreal. I reached the front door, opened it as quietly as I could, and stepped outside. Only when the door clicked shut behind me did I let the first tear fall.
I sat in my car without starting the engine.
The folder rested on the passenger seat beside me.
Twenty minutes earlier, I’d imagined spending the afternoon talking to Patrick about baby names.
Instead, I sat staring through a windshield blurred by tears, wondering how a marriage built over eight years could be shaken by one photograph and a silence that had said far more than words ever could.
I don’t remember how long I sat there. Five minutes. Maybe thirty. Time had stopped making sense. People came and went along the street, pulling into driveways, collecting deliveries, walking dogs. The ordinary rhythm of the neighborhood carried on as though nothing had changed.
My world had.
I wiped my face with the sleeve of my sweater and forced myself to breathe. Maybe I’d misunderstood. Maybe there was another part of the conversation I hadn’t stayed to hear. Maybe Patrick had defended me after I’d walked away.
The thought lasted only a moment. It didn’t matter. I’d waited. I’d stood outside that office door, giving him every opportunity to say the words I’d been so certain would come.
You don’t know my wife. Naomi would never do that. We’re done talking about this.
Instead, he’d said the only words I never imagined hearing.
I don’t know what to think.
I closed my eyes. The pain wasn’t in the doubt. Fear made people think irrationally. I understood that. The pain was that when someone questioned my character, Patrick’s first instinct hadn’t been to protect it. It had been to question it too.
My phone buzzed in the cup holder. Patrick. I watched it ring until it stopped. A second later, another message appeared.
Hey. How’d the clinic go?
I stared at the screen. He had no idea I was sitting in the driveway. No idea I’d heard every word. My fingers hovered over the keyboard.
I’m outside. I heard everything. How could you?
Instead, I locked the phone and placed it face down. I wasn’t ready.
A few minutes later, the front door opened. I instinctively ducked lower in my seat. Patrick stepped onto the porch with Dustin beside him. They were still talking. Neither of them looked toward my car.
Dustin clapped Patrick on the shoulder.
“I’m just looking out for you.”
Patrick nodded, his expression drawn.
“I know.”
“I hope I’m wrong.”
“So do I.”
The words carried across the quiet afternoon. Dustin walked to his truck and drove away. Patrick stood alone on the porch for several seconds before going back inside. He never realized I had been there.
I started the engine only after the front door closed. I couldn’t go inside, not while my heart felt as though it had been hollowed out.
I drove without thinking, letting familiar roads carry me wherever they pleased.
Eventually I found myself in the parking lot of a small lakeside park Patrick and I had visited countless times over the years.
We’d celebrated promotions there. Planned vacations.
Dreamed about the children we hoped would someday chase ducks along the shoreline.
I sat on our favorite bench and rested a hand over my stomach.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
The apology wasn’t for the baby. It was for myself, for the woman who had walked into the fertility clinic believing the hardest part of this journey was finally over.
I looked out across the water as the afternoon sun danced across its surface. Yesterday, I thought my marriage had reached its happiest chapter. Today, I wasn’t sure my husband knew who he was married to anymore.
And somehow, that hurt even more than the anonymous photograph ever could.