Chapter 1
The night my husband's childhood sweetheart grabbed my waist so hard that I nearly fell in front of Chicago's wealthiest families, I expected him to defend me. Chapter 1: PART 1: THREE HEARTBEATS AND A BLACK FOLDER
PART 1: THREE HEARTBEATS AND A BLACK FOLDER
The morning I learned I was pregnant with triplets, I walked out of my doctor’s office holding three ultrasound pictures against my chest.
Forty-three minutes later, my husband handed me divorce papers.
That was how quickly the happiest morning of my life became the day my marriage ended.
I remember almost everything about those forty-three minutes.
The October air was cold enough to sting my cheeks when I stepped onto the sidewalk outside the fertility clinic on East 67th Street. A yellow cab splashed through a shallow puddle. Someone behind me was arguing into a phone about a delayed delivery. A woman in navy scrubs hurried past carrying coffee.
New York looked exactly the same.
But I didn’t.
Inside my purse were three grainy black-and-white pictures.
Three tiny shapes.
Three tiny beginnings.
Three heartbeats I had just heard through the ultrasound machine while my doctor laughed at the expression on my face.
“Three?” I had whispered.
Dr. Patel smiled.
“Three.”
I had covered my mouth with both hands.
Then I cried.
Not delicate tears.
I cried so hard the nurse handed me tissues and Dr. Patel waited quietly while I tried to understand that after more than a year of negative tests, careful calendars, private disappointment, and Ryan telling me we still had time, our future had suddenly arrived all at once.
Three babies.
Ryan and I had never discussed triplets because ordinary people did not sit around discussing the possibility of triplets.
We had talked about one child.
Maybe two.
He wanted a son someday, though he always added quickly that he would adore a daughter.
I wanted a noisy kitchen.
Christmas stockings.
Crayons in places crayons did not belong.
Tiny shoes near the front door of a home that had always felt too clean.
Ryan Whitmore could negotiate a nine-figure acquisition without changing his pulse. He could sit across from six hostile investors and make them believe surrendering was their own idea.
But I spent the entire drive home imagining him finally losing control.
Maybe he would laugh.
Maybe he would stare at the pictures and count them twice.
Maybe he would pull me into his arms.