Chapter 1 - THE MORNING I STOPPED WAITING
Fifteen days after nearly dying while giving birth to her son, Lucas, the narrator’s husband, Vincent Carter, finally returns home carrying two dozen red roses—only to learn from their nanny that his wife left four days earlier.
But her decision to leave began in the delivery room.
During labor at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, Vincent suddenly walked out after receiving a phone call. When his wife began hemorrhaging and doctors warned she might need emergency surgery, her mother, Diane, called him and told him she could die. Vincent’s answer was cold: “I can’t leave right now. Handle it.”
Lucas was delivered safely after an emergency procedure, and his mother barely survived.
Vincent returned the next morning without an explanation. Worse, his clothes carried the unmistakable perfume of another woman.
When confronted, he dismissed it as a client’s perfume and left.
Already suspicious after months of unexplained absences and contradictory stories, his wife secretly contacted family-law attorney Eleanor Shaw from her hospital bed.
Eleanor gave her two immediate instructions.
Do not sign anything Vincent gives you.
And do not reveal what you know.
Looking through the nursery glass at her newborn son beneath the blue phototherapy lights, she finally accepted what she had spent five years refusing to admit.
May you like
She could no longer build her life around waiting for Vincent Carter to choose her.
So she chose herself.
