Zipping up my suitcase, the weight that had been weighing on my chest for three years finally lifted.
My phone vibrated in my pocket.
It was the Sterling family lawyer, a man named Robert, who always looked at me with barely concealed disgust.
“Mrs. Vance, would the president like to confirm that you signed the documents?”
“Done,” I said calmly. “Tell him he got exactly what he paid for.”
I descended the stairs one last time.
The living room was empty. They hadn’t even bothered to ask me to leave.
Perfect.
I left the Sterling Estate house through the front door, dragging my suitcase behind me.
The night air was cold and clear, washing away three years of stuffiness.
I stopped the car using the app on my phone. I wasn’t going to my parents’. I didn’t want them to see me like this—broken and abandoned.
They warned me not to marry for money. They told me the Sterling family would never accept a girl from Queens whose father taught high school history.
I told them that love would be enough.
I was so young. So stupid.
I checked into a hotel under my maiden name, Nora Vance, and lay in a clean, impersonal bed, staring at the ceiling.
For the first time in three years, I was alone.
For the first time in three years, I could breathe.
The next morning, I woke up feeling nauseous and dizzy.
For weeks, I had felt unsettled, and I attributed it to the stress, the constant strain of living in that house.
But something told me I should go to the clinic.
I sat in the waiting room, filling out forms under my maiden name, surrounded by other women in various stages of life.
When
When they called me, the doctor was…
A woman in her fifties with delicate hands and impeccable posture.
She performed an examination and then an ultrasound, and her eyes widened as she moved the transducer over my belly.
“Mrs. Vance,” she said slowly, “when was your last period?”
