Chapter 15
No warning.
Tears simply fell onto my shirt.
Clara watched quietly.
I had cried twice in front of her before.
When my father died.
And when Noah was born.
The morning Noah arrived, I had stood beside the hospital bed while Clara held him against her chest.
I remember thinking I had never seen anything so small.
I also remember my phone vibrating in my pocket.
A financing call.
I stepped into the corridor twenty minutes later.
At the time, I believed I was protecting our future.
Now, holding my son eleven days after nearly losing the right to hold him at all, I finally understood what the future had actually been.
It weighed barely more than a few kilograms.
It was breathing against my chest.
“You left the hospital to take a business call,” Clara said suddenly.
I looked at her.
Her eyes were wet.
“After he was born.”
“I remember.”
“I told everyone you had something urgent.”
“Clara—”
“I defended you.”
She laughed quietly.
“I defended you constantly.”
I said nothing.
“When my mother asked why you were never home, I said the company was under pressure.”
She wiped beneath one eye.
“When my friends asked whether you were helping at night, I said you needed sleep because people depended on you.”
Her voice began to shake.
“When you missed the pediatric appointment, I told myself you had no choice.”
“Stop.”
She stared at me.
I corrected myself.
“No. Sorry. Go on.”
She looked almost surprised.
Then she nodded.
“The worst part wasn’t Sabrina.”
I had expected her name.
It still cut.
“The affair was horrible,” Clara said. “Finding out about her was horrible. Seeing the photos was…”
She stopped.
Breathed.
“But that wasn’t the moment I left you.”
I looked down at Noah.
“The fever.”
“No.”
My eyes returned to hers.
“The messages?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
Her face crumpled for one second before she controlled it.
“When I realized you had seen them.”
I could not breathe.
“At first, I thought something had happened to you. I thought maybe your phone was dead. Maybe you were in a meeting. Maybe you’d lost it.”
She looked toward the window.
“Then the read receipt appeared.”
My stomach turned.
I had forgotten.
I had opened the message.
She had known.
“I was holding Noah while he cried, and I saw that you had read my message.”
Clara’s voice became almost a whisper.