Part 2
By the time I got home, Derek was standing in the nursery pretending to think about paint colors.
That almost made me laugh.
The room was pale yellow, soft and warm, filled with the little hopeful things I had chosen over the past three months: cloud-shaped shelves, folded blankets, a white crib, framed prints with baby animals smiling at a world that had clearly never met adult human beings. Derek stood there with his hands in his pockets like a man reviewing a remodeling project instead of a husband whose mistress had just terrorized his pregnant wife.
“How long?” I asked.
He turned slowly. “Elena, listen—”
“How long have you been sleeping with Brittany?”
His face changed then. Not with guilt. With calculation. Derek always needed two seconds to choose which version of himself would enter a room. Regretful husband. Stressed businessman. Man caught in a misunderstanding.
Victim of his own choices. He picked remorse.
“Since January,” he said.
January.
I got pregnant in February.
That fact slid into my chest like broken glass. He had taken me to a mountain inn for Valentine’s weekend, held my face in both hands, told me he wanted a family with me, and all along he had been sleeping with his assistant.
