I pressed my back against the wall and breathed. The pain in my abdomen pulsed with each heartbeat. The discharge papers lay scattered on the floor between us, face down, the words hidden.
Maybe I made the right decision not to keep the baby. A man who didn't love his wife wouldn't love his kid either.
When I came back to the Valente estate, the house was empty. The guards were at their posts. The kitchen smelled faintly of the lunch that the housekeeper had prepared and no one had eaten.
I sat at the kitchen table and opened my phone. I was going to write something. I didn't know what yet. Something that would make the silence inside me into words that other people could hear.
Then I saw it.
The latest whisper through the wives' network. Someone had seen Silvana leaving the clinic that afternoon with a man. She'd described him in detail to anyone who would listen. Not his face. His back. The breadth of his shoulders. The way he held the door for her. The way his hand rested on her waist as they walked to the car.