Chapter 3

That night, after Ethan fell asleep, his phone lit up on the nightstand.

I reached over to silence it — and saw the message.

*Ethan, I've been sick again today. When are you coming to take care of me? The baby and I both miss you!*

The contact name was saved as "Little Deer."

My hand hovered in the air for two full seconds.

Then I picked up his phone and opened the conversation thread.

There was only one message — the one she'd just sent.

He must clean the chat every day.

I hesitated for a moment, then clicked into her profile.

Her most recent post was two photos of pregnancy tests. The caption: *Two lines. I'm in shock.*

The timestamp was the same afternoon Ethan and I had confirmed our wedding date. Three o'clock.

So on the very day he booked the wedding venue with me, he had been celebrating becoming a father with another woman.

How perfectly symmetrical.

I set the phone down. I went to the kitchen, poured myself a glass of water, and drank it slowly.

When I came back, he had rolled over. His arm was draped loosely over his eyes.

He mumbled my name — "Olivia..." — in a sleepy, faraway voice.

I didn't move.

Something flickered across his face. His brow creased. When he spoke again, his voice was thick and nasal, the way it only got when he was deep in a dream.

"I just dreamed... that I disappeared, and you didn't even wait. You just turned around and married someone else..."

He said it like it had frightened him. He unconsciously shifted toward my side of the bed.

The old me would have wrapped my arms around him immediately, would have said something embarrassingly sincere like *"I'll never leave you."*

But I just looked at him. "Go to sleep."

He half-opened one eye, studying me with drowsy suspicion.

He seemed dissatisfied with my response.

I was already too exhausted to manage his moods. I rolled over and went to sleep.

The next morning, the doorbell rang early.

Three hiking buddies showed up with enormous packs, crowding into the entryway.

"Ethan! I printed out the Everest route map — look, we go in through the south col, then to Base Camp, then the Khumbu Icefall up toward Camp One—"

They spread the map across the coffee table, all talking at once.

I leaned against the kitchen doorframe, sipping soy milk, not saying a word.

Ethan noticed the silence and came over, holding up the map. "Olivia, look — we planned every day, every kilometer. We have experience, we have a system. Nothing's going to happen."

"Mmm," I said, and kept sipping.

He seemed vaguely uncomfortable. He started to say something else, but his phone rang. He stepped out to the balcony to take it.

From where I stood, I couldn't make out the words — only the occasional lilt of laughter. Soft. Playful.

The three hiking buddies glanced at each other and very deliberately went back to studying the map.

Two minutes later, Ethan came back in and said casually, "One of the new hires at the company. Just started. Little work question she didn't understand."

He looked at me with the expectant patience of a man waiting to be interrogated.

But I said nothing.

I was thinking about "Little Deer."

He had hired a batch of management trainees earlier that year. One of them was a girl named Grace Harlow. I'd seen her once, downstairs from his office, when I'd come to pick him up for lunch.

She wore her hair in a ponytail. When she smiled, she had two deep dimples. And when she spotted Ethan, her eyes lit up like lamps.

At the time I'd said to him: "That girl's sharp."

He'd smiled and said, "Yeah. The skill set's a match."

Now I understood what he meant by that.

"Olivia?" Ethan said, with a faint note of fishing in his tone. "You're not curious what the question was?"

"I don't know anything about your business." I wiped my hands on a dish towel and picked up my bag. "I'm going to the store. Carry on."

At the door, I glanced down at my vibrating phone.

A message glowed on the screen: *Appointment confirmed — one week from today.*

I typed back *okay*, and instantly Ethan's hand shot out and snatched the phone.

"One week from now? What for?"