There I stood. A heavily pregnant woman, belly aching, surrounded by strangers coming and going from the hospital. Nurses ending their shifts, collars turned up against the rain. A man in a wheelchair being loaded into a van. A young couple running for the entrance, laughing, sharing a single umbrella. None of them looked at me. None of them stopped. And in that cold, indifferent world, under the awning of a hospital where my husband had just tended to another woman with a tenderness he had never once shown me, I cried until I had no more tears left in me.
The rain didn't stop. The parking lot lights buzzed their flat orange hum. And when the tears were finally gone, when my body had nothing left to give, I wiped my face with the back of my hand, straightened my coat over my belly, and walked to the curb to find a cab.
I had a plan. I had evidence. I had a daughter who would carry the Ferraro name.
That would have to be enough.
Dante didn't come home that night.
Instead, his name lit up my phone screen at quarter past eleven. A single text:
'Hey Olivia, I'm working late tonight and crashing at the club. It's getting cold and rainy, so don't forget to close the window before bed. Love you always, your husband.'
I read the message without feeling anything.
The phone sat in my palm, its glow the only light in the bedroom. Rain streaked the tall windows of the Moretti brownstone, and somewhere beyond the property wall, a car engine idled. One of the soldiers on the night rotation. Always watching. Always there. A house full of surveillance and not a single person who saw what was actually happening inside it.
In the past, I would have worried. I would have replied. I would have stayed awake with the lamp on and the covers pulled back on his side, waiting for the sound of his key in the lock, telling myself that a man who remembered to remind you about the window still loved you. I would have typed back something soft. Something trusting. Something stupid.
Now, I didn't even bother to respond.