Chapter 2 - The Face in the MoonlightThe baby had a dusting of dark brown hair and the exact same distinctive curve of the upper lip that Eric saw every morning in the bathroom mirror.
My knees felt weak. I had to grip the footboard of the mahogany bed to keep from collapsing onto the floor.
How was this possible?
If this infant was Eric’s biological child—if he had fathered a baby with someone else while we were married—it meant every quiet dinner, every averted glance, and every cold touch over the past year had been a lie built on a foundation of monumental betrayal.
Yet as I stood there in the dark, staring down at the sleeping child, a strange, suffocating contradiction gripped my chest. The baby didn't look like a stranger's secret. He looked like Eric stamped into miniature form.
“Clara?”
The voice was rough, raspy with sudden awakening.
I jumped as if I’d been struck by lightning. I spun around to find Eric sitting up in bed, rubbing his eyes with the heel of his palm. His dark hair was messy, sticking up on one side, and his broad chest was bare beneath the moonlight.
When his eyes focused and he saw me standing by the doorway with my travel coat clutched in my fists, the color vanished entirely from his face.
“Clara,” he breathed again, his voice dropping into a register of sheer, unadulterated panic. “You... you weren't supposed to be back until Thursday.”
“Clearly,” I said, my voice trembling with a fury so cold it burned. I pointed a shaking finger at the small bundle sleeping peacefully on my side of the bed. “Care to explain why there is a baby on my pillow, Eric?”
Eric threw off the duvet and scrambled out of bed, ignoring the cold floor. He raised his hands defensively, stepping between me and the bed as if he were shielding the infant from an enemy.
“Clara, wait. Please. Just let me explain—”
“Explain what?” I cut him off, my voice rising, sharp enough to cut glass. “That you’ve been living a double life? That while I was in New York killing myself to close a deal for our future, you were out fathering a child? Or did you just bring your mistress's baby home for me to babysit?”
“No!” Eric shouted, his voice cracking with a raw, desperate agony that stopped me dead in my tracks. He dropped his hands, running them frantically through his messy hair. “No, Clara, God, no. Look at me. Do you really think I would ever do that to you?”
“Then whose child is that?” I demanded, tears of betrayal finally hot and blinding in my eyes. “Who brought a baby into our bed without a single word of warning?”
Eric looked back at the sleeping infant, then at me. His chest heaved as if he were trying to pull air into lungs that had collapsed.
“He’s mine,” Eric whispered, the words tearing out of his throat like glass. “And he’s yours, too.”
The bedroom went completely silent. The distant sound of the Pacific waves crashing against the rocks below sounded like a muffled heartbeat.
“Are you insane?” I hissed, taking a step forward. “I lost our baby eight months ago! I was in the hospital, Eric! I bled on an operating table while you held my hand and cried! Don't you dare stand there and tell me this is our child!”
“Not biologically yours,” Eric corrected frantically, stepping closer and reaching out as if to touch my arm, though he stopped himself when he saw me flinch away. “Clara, listen to me. Remember when I said I had to handle an emergency with my old foster agency in Los Angeles last month?”
“You said a former case worker needed help with an endowment fund!”
“It wasn't an endowment fund,” Eric said, his voice dropping to a harsh, trembling whisper. “My old foster brother, Marcus—the only person from that hellhole who ever watched my back—he died in a car crash two months ago. He had no one. He didn't tell anyone, but three weeks ago, a social worker contacted me. Marcus had a son. A newborn. The mother signed away her rights at birth, and when Marcus died, the state was going to throw this little boy into the foster system the exact same way they threw us in thirty years ago.”
I stared at him, the rage in my chest suddenly warring with a staggering, dizzying wave of shock.
“A foster home,” I whispered.
“I couldn't do it,” Eric said, tears finally spilling over his eyelashes and cutting dark trails down his cheeks. “I couldn't let my nephew—my brother’s blood—end up in the same cold system that nearly destroyed me. When the adoption paperwork cleared in an emergency hearing late last night, I brought him straight here. I was going to tell you the moment you walked through the front door on Thursday. I was terrified of how you’d react because we haven't talked about... about our own loss without breaking. But I didn't cheat on you, Clara. I swear on my life, I never would.”
May you like
The anger didn't vanish, but it shifted, cracking open to reveal an ocean of raw, complicated pain.
Before I could process his words, the baby on the bed let out a soft, whimpering cry, stirring beneath the blue blanket and opening a pair of bright, stormy blue eyes that mirrored my husband's exactly.
Related Stories
