My husband forgot to hang up the call that night, and I was about to tell him I loved him before everything changed. Instead, I heard his voice soften in a way I had never heard before, careful and intimate, like he was guarding something that did not belong to me.
“Sweetheart, when Paige’s father transfers the ten million dollars, I will file for divorce right away,” he said quietly. “I promise you everything will be settled.”
The voice that answered him belonged to my closest friend, Brooke, and she sounded almost amused as if this were a harmless plan.
“What if she starts to suspect something?” she asked lightly.
“She will not suspect anything,” he replied with complete confidence, and that certainty cut deeper than anything else. “Paige trusts people because her father raised her that way.”
Then came the sentence that broke something inside me in a way that could not be repaired.
“Good, because I am pregnant,” Brooke said, her tone calm and certain.