Chapter 10
Taz
Hudson isn't crashing.
I know it before the nurse even finishes her sentence. She's smiling, clipboard in hand, chatting about how well he's doing: off the ventilator, gaining weight, possibly ready for discharge in a few days.
"He's been stable all morning," she says brightly. "Your fiancée must have gotten confused."
The floor tilts.
Twenty minutes. I stood outside the NICU waiting for someone to update me, pacing like an idiot while my wife sat downstairs with our newborn daughter, and the whole time Hudson was fine. The whole time, Maria could have verified with a single phone call.
I thought I was being fast. I thought I could check and be back in five minutes. Then I kept waiting, certain the nurse would come any second. A dying baby. I kept picturing Clem, imagined her small chest struggling, and I couldn't breathe until I knew—
But Molly told me to wait. She asked me to let Maria call.
I didn't leave because I wanted Kendall.
I wanted to come back to Molly and take our daughter home.
But that's not the point, is it? The point is I've been hiding things from Molly for months, making decisions alone because I convinced myself I was protecting her, and every single time I thought I was fixing something, I was actually just proving she couldn't count on me.
Loving her was never the problem. Making her feel loved—that's what I keep failing at.
I have to get back downstairs. Now.
Behind me, Kendall is standing in the doorway. Smiling.
The trembling, tear-streaked woman who begged me to come is gone. She's just smiling, satisfied.
"You," I say slowly. "You lied."
"I was worried." Her voice is sweet and unconcerned. "Sometimes I get the medical terms mixed up."
"His heart," I say. "You said his heart was crashing."
"Did I?" She tilts her head, innocent. "I'm so tired, Taz. You know how it is. New babies."
The nurse glances between us uncertainly. "Is everything okay?"
"She's not my fiancée," I manage. "My wife is downstairs waiting to go home. Thank you."
I'm already running before the last word is fully out of my mouth.
The hallway blurs past me: white walls, fluorescent lights, the squeak of my boots on linoleum. Molly's room is two floors down and I take the stairs two at a time because the elevator is too slow, everything is too slow, I should never have left.
Five minutes. I swore five minutes and it's been twenty.
The door to her room is open.
Empty.
The bed is stripped. The bags are gone. The car seat is gone. Clem is gone.
My wife is gone.
"No." The word comes out cracked. "No, no, no—"
I search the room like she might be hiding somewhere, like this is a nightmare I can wake up from. The bathroom is empty. The closet is empty. The bassinet is empty except for—
The ring.
Her wedding ring, sitting on the tray next to a bunch of sweet peas I bought this morning.
I pick it up and my legs give out. I sink onto the edge of the stripped bed, the ring clutched in my fist, and for a long moment I can't breathe.
She's gone.
She told me. She looked me in the eye and told me exactly what would happen if I walked out that door, and I walked out anyway. Five minutes, I told her, and I should have known better, should have remembered missing her labor, should have understood that she was done giving me chances.
I call her.
It rings and rings and rings.
I call again. Same thing.
Twenty-three calls. Twenty-three times listening to her voicemail, her voice saying "Hey, it's Molly, leave a message," like everything is normal, like our whole life isn't falling apart.
I drive to our house. The LA house, the two-story we bought together because she wanted a real yard for a garden. I pull into the garage and run inside calling her name, but I already know. I can feel the emptiness before I even open the door.
Her keys aren't on the hook. Her jacket isn't on the chair. The nursery—
The nursery is exactly how we left it. Half-painted walls, the mobile hanging from the ceiling, the crib pieces still laid out in the garage because I was going to finish building it this weekend. I was going to have it ready when she came home.
I sink onto the floor of my daughter's empty room and put my head in my hands.
That's where my mother finds me two hours later.
"Tazio." Her voice is sharp. "Get up."
"She's gone, Mom," I say from the floor. "She left and she's not answering and I don't know where—"
"I know where she is," Maggie says.
I jerk upright. "What? Where?"
"I'm not telling you." She crosses her arms, blocking the doorway like I might try to run past her. "Because right now, you finding her would make everything worse."
"She has my daughter," I say, and correct myself. "Our daughter. I need to—"
"You need to sit down and explain to me exactly how you managed to screw this up so completely." She points at the floor. "Sit."
I sit, because my mother has a look on her face I haven't seen since I was fifteen and she caught me sneaking out to meet Jenny Parsons behind the barn.
"She texted me," Maggie says. "She and Clem are safe. That's all you're getting right now."
"Mom—" I start.
"You are a dumbass who did everything wrong," she says, each word clipped. "You understand that, right?"
"Yes." My voice breaks on the word. "I was trying—"
"To what?" She doesn't let me off the hook. "Tell me. Help me understand why you kept this secret from your pregnant wife for months."
The question lands hard because I've been asking myself the same thing. Why didn't I tell her? Why did I keep showing up at that NICU, keep letting Kendall pull me in, keep choosing wrong over and over and over?
"I didn't believe it," I say finally. "The test, the whole story.
It didn't make sense. I never touched her, Mom.
Never came close. So I thought if I could just prove it was fake, if I could get the real results, Molly would never have to know.
She wouldn't have to deal with it. She was already stressed about the pregnancy and I didn't want—"
"You didn't want her to feel exactly what she's feeling right now," Maggie says.
"Yes," I say.
"Except she found out anyway," she says. "And it was worse. Because she found out you'd been lying."
"It was worse." I drag my hands through my hair, pulling hard enough to hurt. "I made it worse. I was trying to protect her."
"Did you ever check Jensen's proof yourself?" she asks. "Actually verify the test?"
"I called the number on the report," I say, and hear how weak it sounds. "Then I kept letting Jensen stall me. I finally asked my doctor last week. The new collection is arranged, but it should have happened months ago."
"Months ago," Maggie repeats, her voice dry as dust. "At least you can hear it."
"Mom—" I say.
"Stop waiting." She jabs a finger at my chest. "Go. Now. Stop talking about what you're going to do and do it."
She's right. She's right and I've been an idiot, paralyzed by guilt and confusion while Molly lost faith in me piece by piece.
I stand up.
"I'm completing the new collection," I say. "Through my own doctor. Bypassing Jensen completely."
Maggie tilts her head. "And what changes when the report arrives?"
"Then I'll know," I tell her. "Then I can go to Molly with proof in my hand."
"And then what?" she asks. "You go back to the office, and she goes back to waiting for you to come home?"
I open my mouth. Nothing comes out.
"You've been choosing that job over your wife since before Kendall ever showed up," my mother says, and she doesn't soften it. "The late nights. The missed dinners. The way you left her alone for months building a life she didn't want."
I want to argue. I want to say it was for us, for our future, that I was building a future so she'd never have to worry about anything.
But she worried anyway. She worried about whether I still loved her, whether she mattered, whether she'd made a mistake choosing me.
"I'll resign," I say. "CEO. Effective immediately."
Maggie's eyebrows rise. "You're serious?"
"The job is what I kept choosing," I tell her. "Even before this. She's more important."
"Okay then." She steps aside, clearing the doorway. "Go prove it."
The next morning, Dr. Halloran, who has been my doctor since Little League and still wears cowboy boots under her white coat, asks whether I understand the independent collection process.
"I want the results sent directly to me," I say. "No assistant. No one collecting them on my behalf."
"We'll use the contact details you verify with us," Dr. Halloran says, tapping her pen against the form. "The samples and paperwork will be handled through the lab's process."
"And Kendall's signed?" I ask.
"Your lawyer handled that with the hospital," she says. "Consent for the infant sample went through the NICU's legal office, and she signed rather than have it go before a judge. The paperwork is complete. We'll let you know when the report is available. We expect it later this week."
I sit still for the swab. Five minutes. Months of excuses, and the part requiring me to open my mouth takes five minutes.
That afternoon, my mother calls while I'm staring at the resignation letter.
"Have you sent it?" she asks without saying hello.
"I'm reading it through," I tell her.
"For spelling," Mom asks, "or for an escape route?"
"I'm trying to make sure I don't leave a mess for everybody else," I say.
"Give them the information they need," she says. "Don't volunteer to remain indispensable for another six months."
"You make it sound easy," I mutter.
"I think it will be uncomfortable," she says. "You've mistaken discomfort for impossibility before."
I look at the paragraph offering to be available for anything they need. Delete it. Put in the handoff details instead.
"I'm sending it now," I tell her.
"Good," she says. "And don't send a copy to Molly as a receipt."
My hand stops over the mouse.
"She doesn't owe you a response to every sensible thing you finally do," Mom says. "Let one of them happen without asking her to applaud."
"I wasn't going to ask her to applaud," I say.
"Then don't ask her to reassure you either," Mom says, and hangs up.
I send the letter. The acceptance arrives that evening. No fight. No negotiation. By nine that night, my calendar has been split between three people I trained. Nobody calls to ask where anything is.
On the third night, a process server shows up at the house. Young guy, nervous, clearly not excited about delivering papers to someone my size.
"Tazio Williams?" he asks, squinting up at me.
"Yeah," I say.
He pushes an envelope into my hands and backs off the step. "These are for you. You've been served."
I take the envelope and open it standing in my doorway, and my hands go cold.
Petition for Legal Separation. Filed by Molly Edward.
Her lawyer's address is listed at the bottom instead of hers. She's hidden herself from me completely.
I search the document, looking for some clue, some hint of where she is. There's nothing. Just the cold legal language of a marriage being dismantled piece by piece.
After he leaves, I can't stand the silence anymore. I drive.
I don't mean to end up on the road to Ojai. But my truck seems to know the way, muscle memory from years of Sunday drives when we'd check on the bees and she'd make me pull over so she could photograph some wildflower I couldn't tell from any other wildflower.
The county line is as far as I get before I pull onto the shoulder. Her grandmother's farm is twenty minutes ahead. From here I can't see it, can't know if there's a light in a single window, can't know if she's there at all.
I sit there for five minutes, engine idling, telling myself she could be there. Could be asleep. Could be anywhere.
But I turn the truck around. She asked for space. Separation. And I don't get to show up uninvited just because the loneliness is eating me alive.
I go home.
The next afternoon, Jensen arrives with a box of files: transition documents, handoff notes for whoever takes over my projects.
He sets them on my desk just as his phone buzzes in his pocket.
He glances at it, and his eyes snag. He still has my inbox synced to his phone from years of managing my calendar, and the notification on his screen is the confirmation from the independent lab.
Jensen goes pale. Actually pale, like the blood's draining from his face in real time.
"Is that the lab?" His voice is too casual. Wrong.
"DNA test. Independent lab." I watch him. "Should have results any day."
He doesn't say anything. Just stands there, jaw tight, hands curled at his sides.
"Jensen?" I ask.
"I should go." He's already backing toward the door. "Let me know if you need anything else for the transition."
He's out the door before I can ask why he's gone so gray.