CHAPTER FOUR
1059 Words
Nora's Pov
Diana walked into the room like she had been expecting this moment and had already decided how it would end.
She looked at me once, briefly, the way you glance at something unpleasant before dealing with it, and then turned her full attention to Ethan. She asked him if he was alright. She touched his arm. She positioned herself between us so naturally it almost looked accidental.
Ethan said, "She says she's pregnant."
Diana didn't flinch. She didn't look surprised. She didn't even pause. She simply turned to me with an expression so carefully constructed it could have been painted on and said, "Is that so."
It wasn't a question. It was a warning.
"It's true," I said.
"And you're certain the child is my son's," she said.
I held her gaze. "Completely."
She made a small sound that wasn't quite a laugh and sat down in the chair by the window like the conversation had already exhausted her. She looked at Ethan and said, "This is exactly what I was concerned about. A woman with nothing to lose and everything to gain."
Ethan looked at me. "She's asking for a DNA test."
"I know what she's asking," I said. "I'll take the test. I have nothing to hide."
Diana smiled at that. Thin and precise. "How cooperative."
I wanted to say something sharp back. I had about fifteen things lined up. But I kept my mouth shut because I understood the game she was playing. She wanted me to be emotional. She wanted me to be reactive and loud and easy to dismiss. A composed Nora was harder to manage than an angry one.
Ethan moved to the window and stood with his back to both of us for a moment. I watched him and tried to read the set of his shoulders the way I used to when he was thinking through something difficult in his study. I couldn't read him anymore. The accident had taken that from me too.
He turned around and looked at me directly. "When did you find out?"
"Two days before the accident," I said.
Something moved across his face. Very fast, very brief, gone before I could name it. He looked at his mother. "She found out two days before."
"Which she never told you," Diana said smoothly. "Which suggests she was waiting for the right moment to use it most effectively."
"That is not what happened," I said.
"Then what happened," Diana said, turning to me with that patient, poisonous calm.
I looked at Ethan because he was the only person in the room that mattered. "I found out on Tuesday. I spent two days trying to figure out how to tell you. I was scared. We had a contract, not a relationship, and I didn't know how you would react. Before I could say anything, your car went off the road."
Silence.
Diana let it sit for exactly three seconds then said, "Very convenient timing."
"Diana." Ethan said her name quietly but it landed like a full stop. She closed her mouth.
He looked at me for a long moment. I could see him working through it, turning it over, trying to fit it into the version of events he had been given. He didn't know me. He had no stored impression of who I was to measure my words against. He was trying to decide if I was telling the truth with nothing but his own instinct to guide him.
I stood still and let him look.
Finally he said, "We'll do the DNA test. Early, if possible."
"Fine," I said.
"If the results confirm what you're saying," he said, "we'll discuss next steps."
Diana stood up at that. The patience cracked slightly. "Ethan, you cannot seriously be entertaining this. This woman shows up here with a pregnancy and expects…."
"I said we'll discuss it after the results," he said. He wasn't loud. He didn't need to be. Diana stopped talking.
She looked at me one more time before she left the room. That look carried everything she hadn't said out loud. That she wasn't finished. That this small win meant nothing in the larger war she was already conducting. That I could have this moment because she was letting me have it and not because I had earned it.
Then she walked out and closed the door behind her.
Ethan and I stood in the room alone for the first time.
It felt completely different from every other time we had been alone together. Before the accident there had been a quiet understanding between us, an unspoken familiarity that had built itself without permission. Now the room felt like it was full of distance and I was standing on the wrong side of all of it.
He said, "I need you to understand something."
"Okay," I said.
"I don't remember you," he said. "I don't remember the contract or the wedding or any of the time we spent in this house together. Whatever you think existed between us, I have no access to it. I'm not saying it didn't happen. I'm saying I can't feel it."
It hit harder than I expected. I nodded like it didn't.
"I'm not going to be cruel to you," he continued. "But I'm also not going to pretend. If the baby is mine I will take responsibility. That's not something I would walk away from. But that's where we are right now. Responsibility. Not anything else."
"I understand," I said.
"Do you have everything you need in this room," he asked.
"Yes."
He nodded and walked toward the door. He stopped with his hand on the frame and stood there for just a second without turning around. Like something had snagged him briefly. Then he kept moving.
I waited until I heard his footsteps fade down the corridor before I sat back down on the edge of the bed.
Responsibility. Not anything else.
I pressed my hand against my stomach and told myself it was enough. It had to be enough.
My phone buzzed on the bed beside me. A message from Grace asking how it went.
I picked it up and typed back three words.
Then Diana's voice floated up from somewhere downstairs, calm and clear and carrying easily through the large quiet house.
"Get me Camille's number."
- Writer
