HE BROUGHT HIS MISTRESS HOME—THEN LEFT HIS PREGNANT WIFE ON THE STAIRS FOR ELEVEN MINUTES

The socks weren't new. My mother had made them before she died, when Alex and I were trying for a baby the first time. I'd been pregnant then, too. Eleven weeks. We'd bought a crib before the ultrasound appointment and spent the next year pretending the empty nursery was an office.

I kept the socks because throwing them away felt wrong and looking at them hurt.

This time, I hadn't planned anything. I was late, then sick, then furious at the smell of coffee. Two pink lines appeared on a Tuesday morning. I stared so long that the bathroom light switched itself off.

I should have told Alex that day.

Instead, I put the test in the white box. Part of me wanted to see whether he'd come home before I said the words. That wasn't noble. It was a test he didn't know he was taking, and I'd already decided a passing grade meant something impossible.

At the gas station, my phone rang. Laura Bennett, my best friend, had called three times.

"You're doing that thing," she said when I answered.

"What thing?"

"Breathing like you've swallowed a sock. Where are you?"

I told her about Diane's party. I didn't tell her about the second pregnancy until she asked why I was parked outside a gas station instead of driving home.

There was a long pause.

"Erin," she said quietly. "Have you called your doctor?"

"Not yet."

"Okay. We can do that tomorrow."

"He looked happy."

"I heard you."

"He never looked like that with me."

Laura didn't say what good friends are supposed to say. She said, "That's not true. I was at your wedding."

I pressed my thumb into the satin ribbon until it left a red line.

Laura worked as a legal assistant, though she'd spent years reminding people she wasn't their attorney. She found me a real lawyer the next morning. Her name was Nia Brooks. She wore scuffed black boots and asked ordinary questions nobody else had bothered to ask: Where did I sleep? Who paid the mortgage? Was I safe to go home?

"Safe?" I repeated. "Alex isn't that kind of man."

Nia didn't argue. She wrote something down. "Do you know what's in the joint savings account?"

I said yes.

She asked me to check anyway.

At home that evening, I discovered forty-two thousand dollars had disappeared in transfers labeled consulting and relocation. I called the bank. The account belonged to both of us. Alex had authorized every payment.

When I confronted him, he said he'd moved money to cover new housing expenses. For Paige.

"It's not stolen if my name's on it," he said.

"It was supposed to be our emergency fund."

He rubbed his forehead. "Don't do the courtroom voice."

I almost screamed. Instead, I went to the kitchen drawer and took out the white box.

Alex stared at it. "What's that?"

"Something I was going to give you."

He reached toward the ribbon.

I pulled the box away.