Beg Somewhere Else, Lucas

Sophia's POV

I set the cake in the center of the dining table and turned it until the piped words faced Lucas's chair. Happy Fifth Anniversary. The silver cake knife went beside it, the one from our wedding.

A smear of white frosting clung to my fingertip. I didn't notice until I picked up the ultrasound photo and left a tiny dot on the corner.

Twelve weeks. Two gray shapes, each labeled in small white type. Baby A. Baby B.

I slid the photo into Lucas's gift box, on top of the watch I'd bought him, and closed the lid without tying the ribbon.

Five years ago, after our first IVF cycle failed, I'd slid down the wall of a hospital hallway and he'd gone down with me. He held me on that cold floor while nurses stepped around us. "However many needles it takes," he'd said into my hair. "I'm here for every one of them."

There had been a lot of needles since then. Tonight I finally got to tell him they'd worked.

The front door opened. I hurried into the entryway, already smiling.

Lucas wasn't alone.

Vanessa Cole stood behind him, pale and small in a camel coat. She was his childhood best friend, the girl next door he'd known since he was six. He turned to her before he looked at me and eased the coat off her shoulders.

"Vanessa just got back from the hospital today," he said, hanging it on the hook where mine usually went. "She shouldn't be alone tonight."

"It's our anniversary."

"I know what day it is, Soph."

The table was set for two. I had practiced this moment in the car, in the shower, in the waiting room where I'd sat by myself. None of the versions had her in them.

I said it anyway. "Lucas, I have something to tell you. We're having twins."

His hand stopped on the coat hook. For one second I thought I had him back.

"We'll talk about it later," he said. "She needs to sit down."

He guided Vanessa past me into the living room.

I followed them in. Vanessa lowered herself onto the couch and pulled something from her tote bag into her lap, hugging it against her stomach.

It was ivory wool in a cable knit. I knew the pattern before I saw the corner, where a line of blue thread was stitched in my mother's slanted handwriting.

For the baby you'll love one day. Mom.

My mother had knitted it in hospice, with hands that shook so badly she'd had to redo whole rows. It was the first blanket for a grandchild she knew she would never meet. Her handwritten pattern tag was still pinned to the edge, crushed under Vanessa's thumb.

"Where did you get that?"

Vanessa held it tighter, the yarn bunching in her fists. "Lucas gave it to me. He said since I'll never be able to get pregnant again, I should at least have one baby thing. Something to hold."

I looked at my husband.

Last month he had offered to organize my mother's boxes in the attic. I'd thanked him and told my sister how thoughtful he was. That same month he'd started leaving his phone face-down on every table in the house. He had missed three of my prenatal appointments, and each time the reason was that Vanessa had her own appointment and no one to drive her.

I'd called it kindness. I'd called it a busy season.

"You went through my mother's things to find it," I said.

"It was sitting in a box." He set his phone on the coffee table, screen down. "She needs it more than we do, Sophia. Don't make this difficult."

"My mother made that for my child."

I crossed the room and took hold of the blanket's edge. "Give it back, Vanessa."

Her eyes filled instantly. She didn't release it. She only looked up at Lucas, and he stepped between us, his shoulder knocking my hand away.

"Stop," he said. "She's been through enough today."

"And what have I been through?"

I went to the table, opened the gift box, and came back with the photo. I held it up in front of his face and pointed.

"That's Baby A. That's Baby B. See those two little marks? Dr. Patel confirmed both heartbeats. Two, Lucas. After five years."

His eyes dropped to the photo for a second. Then he looked over at Vanessa.

She was pressing a tissue under her eyes. "I'm sorry," she whispered, head down. "I just don't know how to be around this. I won't be able to watch her get bigger every day. Not after what they told me this morning."

"You won't have to," Lucas said to her gently.

He turned to me, and the gentleness was gone.

"I need you to call the clinic and end the pregnancy."

I honestly thought I'd misheard him. "What?"

"You heard me."

"Do you know what Dr. Patel told me? She said this was close to a miracle. She said if I lose this pregnancy, getting here again won't be easy. It might never happen. You'd know that if you'd come to a single appointment."

"Doctors always say worst case." He took the photo out of my hand, walked it to the table, and pushed it back across the wood until it stopped against the cake stand. "Vanessa has lost her chance to be a mother. You haven't. You can try again."

"Try again." My voice came out thin. "Like it's a driving test."

"Like it's something we've done before and can do again when the timing is better."

"Better for who?"

He didn't answer that.

"Five years ago you sat on a hospital floor with me," I said. "You promised you'd be there for every needle. Where did that man go, Lucas? Because I've been looking for him for months."

He didn't answer that either. He picked his phone up off the coffee table, tapped the screen, and turned it toward me.

It was an order confirmation from the baby furniture store, with two product photos side by side. The white spindle crib and the natural oak one. We had spent three months of Saturdays choosing them, back when one crib was a hope and the second was a joke about being greedy. I'd placed the order the day the twins were confirmed.

A gray banner sat across both pictures. Canceled.

"When did you do that?"

"This afternoon. We won't need the nursery for now." He slid the phone into his pocket. "Call your doctor tomorrow morning and set it up."

"You're making me choose between my children and my marriage."

"I'm not asking you to choose, Sophia. I'm telling you what needs to happen."

I waited for his expression to change, but it stayed where it was.

I walked to the table and picked up the photo. The dot of frosting had smeared across the corner, close to Baby B. I wiped it clean with my thumb, carefully, and then held on so tightly the glossy paper creased in my fist.

Behind me, Vanessa's voice floated up from the couch, soft and wet. "I don't want to be the bad guy here."

"You're not," Lucas said.

He was standing beside her with one hand resting on the back of the couch, inches from her shoulder. My mother's blanket was still wadded in her lap.

I pressed my palm flat against my stomach, over the two heartbeats I'd heard that week through a speaker in a dark room.

This was the man who had begged me to build a family with him. Standing there, I understood for the first time that he saw our babies the same way he saw those cribs, as an order he could cancel in an afternoon.