My Husband Chose His Mistress Over Our Unborn Baby

The flowers arrived on Tuesday.

Delia brought the vase into my office holding it like evidence. White roses, white lilies, white everything. A florist's idea of apology. The card sat on top, cream-colored, his name in printed script.

"What do you want me to do with these?" she asked.

I didn't look up from my chart. "Hospital next door. Oncology floor. They'll know what to do with them."

"Okay." She paused in the doorway. "Should I start turning these away at the door?"

"No." I finished my note, closed the folder. "Log them. Dispose of them. Don't tell me they arrived."

She nodded once, sharp and efficient, and left with the vase.

I went back to my charts. A fever case, a follow-up ear infection, a well-check for a two-year-old who'd just started saying full sentences. I wrote careful notes. I drew a small star in the margin of the two-year-old's file because he'd told me his favorite thing was airplanes.

I did not think about the flowers again.

That's what I told myself.

---

Wednesday morning I left my building at five forty-five for the gym, same as always. The street was still dark, the kind of Seattle dark that's more gray than black, heavy with the promise of rain that hasn't started yet.

Stefan was standing beside a car parked across the street.

I saw him before he saw me. He was looking down at his phone, one hand in his coat pocket, breath misting in the cold. Not hiding. Not lurking. Just standing there like he had a right to the sidewalk, which technically he did.

I kept walking.

He looked up when I was ten feet away. "Wren."

I nodded the way I'd nod at anyone whose name I'd forgotten but whose face looked vaguely familiar. Polite. Brief. Empty.

"I was hoping we could talk," he said.

I adjusted my gym bag on my shoulder and kept walking.

"Just five minutes," he called after me.

I didn't turn around.

At the corner I heard a car door open and close, an engine start. I didn't look back to see if he followed. I just kept my pace steady, my breathing even, my face blank as glass.

The gym was warm and bright and smelled like rubber mats and old sweat. I wrapped my hands. I hit the bag for an extra two rounds.

---

Thursday he was at the coffee shop.

I walked in at seven-thirty, post-training, hair still damp, and he was sitting at a corner table with a laptop open and a cup in front of him that looked like it had been there awhile. The coffee was probably cold.

He looked up when the door chimed.

I ordered my usual. Black coffee, no room. The barista knew my name. I paid, took the cup, and walked past Stefan's table on my way to the door.

"Wren," he said, quieter this time, like he was asking permission just to say it.

I kept walking.

Outside, I took a sip. The coffee was hot and bitter and exactly what I needed. I got in my car and drove to the clinic and saw eleven patients and did not think about him once.

That's what I told myself.

---

Friday evening I stayed late to finish charts. The clinic was quiet, just me and the hum of the refrigerator in the med room. I locked up at seven and walked to my car in the parking garage, heels clicking on concrete, keys already in my hand.

Stefan was leaning against the pillar beside my car.

I stopped three feet away.

"This is getting predictable," I said.

He straightened. "I'm not trying to corner you."

"You're standing beside my car."

"I just want to talk. Five minutes. That's all I'm asking."

I looked at him for a long moment. The gray at his temples. The lines around his eyes that hadn't been there before. The expensive coat that didn't quite hide how thin he'd gotten.

"No," I said.

I walked past him, unlocked my car, and got in. He didn't move. He just stood there, hands loose at his sides, watching me through the windshield.

I started the engine. I backed out. I drove home.

In my rearview mirror, I saw him still standing there, small and still beneath the fluorescent lights.

---

That night Raegan called.

"He's escalating," she said without preamble.

"He's persistent," I corrected. "Not the same thing."

"Wren."

"I'm handling it."

"You shouldn't have to handle it. That's what restraining orders are for."

"He hasn't done anything illegal."

"Standing outside your building at dawn feels pretty fucking illegal to me."

I set my phone on speaker and poured myself a glass of water. "He's not threatening me. He's not following me home. He's just… there."

"That's called stalking."

"That's called pathetic."

Silence on the other end. Then, softer: "Does it bother you?"

I looked at my reflection in the dark window. My face was calm. My hands were steady.

"No," I said. "It doesn't."

And the strange thing was, I meant it.

I didn't feel anger. I didn't feel fear. I didn't feel anything at all when I looked at him, and that absence — that clean, hollow nothing — was the most honest thing I'd felt in years.

"Good," Raegan said finally. "Keep it that way."

After we hung up, I sat on my couch in the dark and thought about white flowers in a hospital room, and a man standing alone in a parking garage, and the way some debts can never be paid no matter how many times you show up with your hands open.

I went to bed at ten.

I slept fine.