Chapter 2 - Conditions for a Conversation
At ten the next morning, Adrian called precisely when we'd agreed. He didn't begin with an apology or a request to see me. "Did you speak to your attorney?" he asked. I said yes, and told him Nina would contact his lawyer about the divorce documents. "I want to talk about the baby separately from the house and the money," I added. "Can you do that?" After a pause, he answered, "I'll try."
Trying was the word I needed to hear, because certainty from Adrian generally meant someone else's objections had already been dismissed. I sat at the kitchen table, its repaired legs steady beneath my elbows, and told him about the due date, my obstetrician, and the ordinary appointments he'd missed.
I didn't offer a detailed account of every week. I told him what he needed to know now, including that the pregnancy had been uncomplicated so far and that I intended to deliver in Chicago.
"Is there a reason you didn't tell me in March?" he asked. I stared at the condensation on my glass. "You were already preparing to leave for Dubai. Every conversation became about the acquisition.
When I tried to talk about us, you told me we could discuss our personal lives after the deal closed." I heard him inhale. "I said that." "You said it more than once. I should have told you anyway. I didn't. Both things can be true."
He admitted that he hadn't called to tell me his marriage was ending until his attorneys had drafted the papers. "I thought we'd been living apart emotionally for years," he said. "I convinced myself making it official would be kinder." "Then you ordered me out of my home." "That was unforgivable." I waited for the familiar qualification. None came. The absence was not redemption, but it allowed the conversation to continue.
He asked whether I would meet him in person. I proposed a neutral office after Nina had spoken to his counsel. He agreed, then surprised me by asking a practical question about the baby's health insurance.
I had private coverage through Carter & Reed and hadn't yet decided whether to add our daughter to my policy or his. I told him there was time to coordinate it properly. "Don't have someone change anything without asking me," I said. "I won't," he answered.
We had a client presentation that afternoon for a neighborhood bakery expanding into the storefront next door. Its owners wanted the new space to feel like the kitchen in their grandmother's apartment without becoming sentimental. I spent two hours discussing light, durable countertops, and whether a worn family photograph belonged near the front door. The work was ordinary, specific, and absorbing. It reminded me that I existed somewhere outside a marriage falling apart.
During a break, Evelyn asked whether I planned to keep working through my due date. "Absolutely not," I said, because she was waiting for an honest answer. We had already arranged for Caleb to take more responsibility on installations and for Evelyn to handle final site approvals while I took leave. Still, relinquishing daily control frightened me. It would have been convenient to criticize Adrian for doing the same thing I'd never allowed anyone else to do: help.
Two days later, I met Adrian in Nina's conference room. He arrived alone, wearing a charcoal coat instead of one of the suits he used for board meetings. His phone stayed facedown on the table. Nina had arranged for his attorney to join the first portion remotely, and we addressed document exchange, access to personal property still at the mansion, and the fact that neither lawyer considered a unilateral move-out deadline a reasonable way to settle anything.
When the legal discussion ended, Nina gave us twenty minutes alone in the room next door while remaining nearby. Adrian pulled out the copy of the ultrasound I'd emailed him. The print had acquired a crease down one corner. "I kept thinking about whether she has your nose," he said. "All newborns look like potatoes on those pictures," I told him. His surprised laugh loosened something in my chest, then vanished when he remembered the distance between us.
"I thought you stopped loving me," he said. I could have said he was right. The truth was less convenient. "I stopped trusting you to notice when I was hurting. I still loved parts of our life, even after I knew I couldn't keep living it." He looked toward the window. "I didn't know you were building a company." "You didn't ask." "I know." This time I believed he understood the sentence, though not yet everything behind it.
He reached across the table toward the photograph and stopped short of my hand. "Would you consider letting me attend an appointment? I won't speak to the doctor unless you want me to." I told him I needed to think about it. His first instinct was still to make a plan before I'd made a decision, and I watched him deliberately fold his hands back into his lap.
On my way out, Adrian said he would have the rest of my belongings inventoried and available for pickup without requiring me to enter the mansion. "It's your home too," he added. "I shouldn't have spoken as if you were a guest." His words were belated. Still, he was finally naming a harm without making me prove that it existed.
That night, I looked at the calendar reminder for my appointment the following Tuesday. Dr. Shah had been seeing me throughout the pregnancy, and I trusted her to put my wishes first. Letting Adrian hear the heartbeat would not give him permission to rewrite the past.
May you like
Refusing him solely to make him suffer would not change it either. I sent him the date and the clinic address, with one condition: he was to wait until I invited him into the room.
His answer was simply, I will. When I lay down, our daughter kicked hard enough to ripple the blanket. I pressed my palm against the movement and wondered whether Adrian could learn the difference between being allowed to witness someone's life and believing he owned it. Tuesday would offer one answer. It would not be the last test.
