His Brother's Ex, His Unborn Child

Chapter 13

ELENA

I found the pharmacy. It's not the one near the apartment or the one Liam had used when he bought the vitamins.

It's a place on 54th that I had walked past a hundred times without going in. It's small and independent. It's the he kind of pharmacy that had been on the same corner for thirty years and had no reason to know anyone's name unless you gave it to them.

I paid cash.

Three months of prenatal supplements, a brand I had researched myself on my phone with the gallery's wifi rather than our home network. I chose it because the formulation was clean and the manufacturer was transparent. Neither of those things had anything to do with Liam.

I put one month's supply in my desk drawer at the gallery.

I put the receipt in my coat pocket and threw it away three blocks from the apartment.

I did not examine why I was being this careful. I just was.

**

Dr. Chen's office was on Park Avenue but not the one from Carter family physicians and society referrals. She practiced quietly and saw patients by recommendation only. She had been suggested to me by a colleague at a gallery in Tribeca six months ago. I wasn't pregnant yet at that time.

I had remembered her name anyway.

I didn't know why I had remembered it until I needed her.

She was a small woman who had learned to listen before she spoke. She asked her questions in order and I answered them in order. When she asked whether I was taking supplements, I told her about the bottle on the nightstand and the ones in my desk drawer and watched her face do something careful and controlled.

She did not ask why there were two sets.

She simply noted both.

"I'd like to run some additional panels," she said. "Beyond the standard prenatal. Is that all right?"

"Yes," I said.

She sent me to the lab down the hall. I sat in the waiting room and looked at a print on the wall. It was a landscape, competent, the kind of thing chosen to be inoffensive.

The nurse called my name.

I went back in.

**

Dr. Chen came back twenty minutes later.

She sat across from me and folded her hands on the desk. She looked at me with the expression of a woman who had decided to be direct because anything else would be a disservice.

"The standard panels look good," she said. "The baby is developing normally. Your hormone levels are where they should be at this stage."

"But?" I said to her because there is always a catch for everything.

She looked at me.

"There are compounds present in your bloodwork that shouldn't be there," she said. "They're not in any standard prenatal formulation. They're not something you would encounter through diet or environmental exposure in the quantities I'm seeing. At the levels present right now, they haven't caused harm. The baby is fine. But if these compounds were to increase—"

She stopped and chose her next words carefully.

"They would interfere with the pregnancy. Significantly."

The office was very quiet.

"What kind of compounds?" I said.

She named them. She explained what each one did, what it was used for legitimately and why none of those legitimate uses applied to a prenatal supplement.

"How did they get into my bloodwork?" I said.

She looked at me steadily. "That's not a question I can answer for you."

"Can you document this?"

"I already have."

"What do I do?" I said.

"You continue taking your own supplements," she said. "You come back in two weeks instead of four. You document everything you can." She paused. "And you speak to someone you trust about what is happening."

I thought about Sophia. About a lunch three weeks from now that I had been meaning to arrange and a conversation I had been mentally rehearsing.

"I will," I said.

She walked me to the door herself.

At the threshold she stopped.

"Elena." She said my name the way people said it when they wanted to make sure you were listening. "Your instinct to use separate supplements was correct. Whatever made you do that—It was the right call."

I nodded.

I walked out into the Park Avenue afternoon and stood on the pavement for a moment.

I thought about everything that is unfolding. My heart raced.

I pressed my hand flat against my stomach and stood on the pavement and breathed.

Then I went back to the gallery.

**

That evening I bought a lockbox.

It was small and discreet. The size of a shoebox. I paid cash at a hardware store on 55th that had no connection to anyone in my life. I brought it home in a plain bag and took it directly to the bedroom. I put it in the back of the wardrobe behind the things I rarely wore.

Inside the lockbox, I put the notepad I had been writing my lists in.

Dr. Chen's documentation.

The names of the compounds.

Two months of my own supplements.

I locked it. I put the key in the lining of my oldest handbag. It's the one from before the marriage. It's also the one Liam had never shown any interest in because it wasn't expensive enough to register.

Then I went and made dinner and waited for Liam to come home.

He arrived at seven with flowers.

Pale pink peonies, my favorite.

He also had not bought me that in two years. He presented them with the warmth of a man who had remembered something important. His eyes were bright and his smile was full.

"I know it's been a hard few weeks," he said. "You've been tired and I haven't been as present as I should be. I want to do better."

I took the flowers.

"They're beautiful," I said. "Thank you."

I put them in water. I made dinner. We ate together and he talked about a deal at Carter Group.

I listened and asked the right questions. I cleared the plates and we watched something on television. He fell asleep on the sofa with his head tipped back and his mouth slightly open. I sat beside him and looked at his face.

The face of a man entirely at peace.

Then I turned off the lamp and left him sleeping.

I went to bed alone and lay in the dark. I pressed my hand to my stomach and said nothing to anyone.

Whatever was coming, I was ready for it.