Nothing else there 4

* Present time *

The ultrasound is still in my purse. Two boys.

I’ve looked at it four times since leaving the doctor’s office. Sixteen weeks.

I waited on purpose — past the first trimester, past the window where my body has failed three times before. Past the point where the doctor looked me in the eye and said ‘everything looks healthy’ and I had to grip the armrest to keep from crying in front of her.

Sixteen weeks of hiding the nausea. Of telling no one — because I could not survive losing another pregnancy in front of Dominic’s disappointment. That silence at the breakfast table. That look. The quarterly-report look.

But my body held. Twin sons. Two boys who have made it further than any pregnancy since Lily.

The math is simple and intoxicating — he wanted a son, I’m carrying two.

This will finally fix everything.

He’ll stop disappearing on business trips. He’ll stop leaving his phone face-down on every surface. He’ll stop looking through me like I’m furniture he chose a decade ago and forgot to replace.

He’ll look at me the way he looked at me at the beginning. Like I’m the answer. Like I’m enough. Like I’m his beloved wife.

I know this is dangerous. I’ve built this hope before and watched it collapse. But two healthy growing boys… For once the math is on my side.

This will fix everything. It must.

At home I cook his favorite — the roast he likes, the wine he prefers, the table set for two while Lily is at a friend’s house for a sleepover. I light candles. I change into the dress he once picked out for me.

I catch my reflection in the hallway mirror and almost laugh. I look like a woman on a first date. Nervous and bright. I haven’t looked like this in years.

I imagine his face when I tell him. Imagine him crossing to my side of the table, pulling me up from my chair, pressing his hands against my stomach the way he did thirteen years ago. Reverent. Possessive. Warm.

By the time the front door opens, I’ve convinced myself so completely that the version of tonight I’m living in feels more real than the dining room.

He walks in and kisses me on the lips, but it’s automatic, the way you’d tap a button you’ve pressed a thousand times. Sits down without looking at the candles.

“I have news,” he says.

“Me too.” I smile. My heart is hammering so hard I can feel it in the base of my throat. “But you go first.”

He sets his glass down with the deliberateness I know. The deliberateness that means a decision has already been made somewhere I wasn’t invited.

“I’ve been thinking about the future,” he says. “The company, continuity. The Carraway name needs a son.”

My hand drifts to my stomach under the table.

Yes. I know. I have…

“I’ve met someone, and it’s ongoing,” he says. His voice is level and completely calm. “She’s younger, healthy, and willing to build what I need.”

He picks up his glass. Puts it down without drinking.

“I’m going to file for divorce,” he says like he’s telling me about a meeting he’s scheduled. “She’ll move in soon. Lily stays with me, obviously — she’s still a part of Carraway bloodline. It doesn’t make sense to uproot her.”

Then he straightens his napkin and looks dead in my eyes.

“You’ll want to start sorting your things out and find a new place as soon as possible.”

I am sitting across from a man I dressed up for, in the dress he once said he liked, at a table I set with candles and good plates like a woman playing house with a man who was already demolishing it.

“What?” The word comes out before I can stop it, small and cracked. “Dominic… After thirteen years, you’re just… You’re sitting here telling me over dinner that you—”

“I’m telling you because I respect you enough to do it in person,” he says, and his voice doesn’t change.

The steadiness is what makes the room spin — he rehearsed this. He practiced like his usual presentations, and he already knew how tonight would end before he walked through the door.

“You cooked dinner to tell me something too,” he says, glancing at the candles, the good plates, the roast. “What was it?”

My fingers go still against my stomach. The ultrasound is in my purse three feet away and I can feel my heartbeat in my ears and in my wrists and in the base of my throat where the smile was thirty seconds ago.

Two boys. The thing I drove home believing would save everything.

I could tell him right now. I could reach into my bag and lay the image on the table between the candles and watch his face change. And he would change — he would cancel the divorce, he would keep me.

But keeping isn’t wanting. And I can see it now, suddenly and brutally, with a clarity that tastes like metal in the back of my mouth — he would postpone, not cancel. He’d wait for the boys to be born, install them in his legacy, and then finish what he started tonight.

Except by then he’d have three children to take from me instead of one.

Telling him doesn’t save my marriage. It gives him more to take when it ends.

“Nothing serious.” My hands are trembling under the table and my throat is closing as I fold my napkin and set it beside my plate. “I’ll give you a divorce.”

He blinks — just once, the only tell. He was expecting tears, negotiation, the suitcase scene from thirteen years ago. He was not expecting compliance delivered in a voice flatter than his own.

“Good,” he says, recovering fast. “I think this is the right decision for both of us. For Lily especially.”

“Don’t.” The word comes out quiet but it fills the room. “Don’t say her name right now. Not like you’ve already taken her away from me and it’s handled. You should’ve known by now damn well that I won’t give her to you that easily. So don’t.”

He studies me across the table and for a moment, just a moment, and something moves behind his eyes that might be a surprise or might be a recalculation.

Then it’s gone.

“I’ll have the papers drawn up this week. And you also should’ve known well by now that none of the lawyers you’ll find could beat mine in this. It’d be better for you to accept the reality now,” he says, pushing back from the table.

Then stands, buttoning his jacket like he’s leaving a restaurant. “We can keep this civil, Aria. For everyone’s sake.”

I watch him walk out of the dining room. Hear his footsteps on the stairs. The bedroom door closing. The house settling around me like it’s exhaling.

The candles burned down to nothing while I sat at the table until the wax pools on the tablecloth. My hand on my stomach, the ultrasound in my purse, and two boys growing inside me that their father will never know about.

Not tonight. Not from me. Not like this. Preferably never.