He Made Me Carry His Mistress's Baby

Chapter 2 The Birthday Passcode

I grabbed his tie. A dark red lipstick stain marked the back—Vanessa's little message to me.

I threw up all over Nathan.

He froze for a moment, then caught me by the shoulders and shouted for a nurse. My stomach was already empty, but I kept retching until my throat burned. The cloying sweetness of her perfume clung to his shirt collar and got into my lungs with every breath.

"Get away from me." He tried to wipe my mouth, but I shoved his hand aside. "You smell awful."

The doctor said pregnancy could make me sensitive to odors and suggested that Nathan change his clothes.

Nathan's gaze dropped to his tie, and his expression shifted. He yanked it off and stuffed it into the trash along with his jacket.

"I'm sorry, baby. I should have changed sooner."

He was always quick to apologize. Whenever we argued, he would give in so fast that somehow I ended up looking like the one who refused to let things go.

I lay back and closed my eyes. "I want to sleep."

"All right. I'll stay right here."

He had been sitting beside me for less than 10 minutes when a soft knock sounded at the door.

"Daddy." It was a child's voice.

My hand clenched beneath the blanket.

Nathan got to his feet and went to the door, lowering his voice. "Why did you bring him here?"

"He woke up and couldn't find you. He wouldn't settle down for me."

"Daddy, will you stay with me when I get my shot tomorrow?"

"Of course. Just like last time. You can hold Daddy's hand."

The child murmured an answer, and the door gently closed. I kept my eyes shut, but tears ran sideways into my pillow.

He was so good at comforting a kid through shots.

All those last-minute meetings and overseas calls—how many times had he really been holding this child's hand while I waited alone for him to come home?

Something suddenly vibrated on the bedside table. Nathan had forgotten his phone. A message from the nanny lit up the screen.

Nanny: Owen's blue pajamas are still in the car.

His passcode was still my birthday. He always said that if he used the most important day of his life, he would never forget it.

I unlocked the phone. Our conversation was still pinned at the top, with a bedtime playlist from him as the latest message. I scrolled through the app he normally used, but it was spotless. Vanessa's name didn't appear anywhere.

Following the nanny's notification, I discovered that he had installed another messaging app and hidden it inside a folder labeled Projects. I opened it. He had been certain I would never touch anything related to his work.

At the top of the conversation was a family photo of all three of them in front of a Christmas tree. Nathan wore the cashmere scarf I had chosen for him and held a little boy in a red sweater. Vanessa leaned against his shoulder with one hand on his waist.

That Christmas, he had promised to come home as soon as his meeting in Nordhaven ended. I sat beside a dried-out turkey until 2 a.m., waiting for him.

I scrolled through message after message: a fourth-birthday cake, a first ski trip, a fever in the middle of the night, a preschool art project.

I had always thought Nathan disliked taking pictures. It turned out he liked them just fine—he just didn't want many of us together.

Farther down, I found Owen's medical records. The diagnosis read leukemia.

Vanessa had asked whether cord blood could really save him. Nathan replied that he would speak to the doctors again. Immediately below their exchange was a picture of one of my prenatal reports.

I recognized it. Nathan had taken the photo himself after my appointment, saying he wanted to keep it so we could show our child one day.

I photographed everything with my own phone. By the time I finished, my fingers were numb. Then I carefully restored his phone to the way I had found it.

When the door opened again, Vanessa came in alone. She glanced at the tie in the trash and laughed quietly.

"You saw it."

It wasn't a question.

I pushed myself upright. "How old is the boy?"

"He just turned 4." She told me his birthday.

A sharp ringing filled my ears. On that very day four years earlier, I had lost my first child.

"You remember now?" She came closer, trailing her fingers over the vase on my bedside table. "You kept calling him. I was in so much pain that I told him to turn off his phone."

"And he did?"

"Of course. I was in labor and suffering. How could he possibly have had time to answer you?" Her voice was light, as though she were sharing an amusing story.

Vanessa bent down and smoothed the corner of my blanket.

"Sophie, we were actually in the same hospital. That day, you lost a child downstairs. Upstairs, I gave him a son."

The ringing in my ears stopped. The hospital room, the flowers, and her triumphant face all faded out.

I was back in the middle of the night four years earlier.

I had been 13 weeks pregnant. Nathan called to say he was having dinner with a client and told me not to wait up. In the middle of the night, I went downstairs alone to get some water. I missed a step and tumbled down the staircase.

Agony tore through my abdomen. I tried to stand, only to find my hand covered in warm blood.