Thirty Thousand a Month for His Mistress, One War From Me

I had to keep it together. I couldn't let my mom hear me cry. I wouldn't.

"It's raining, Mom. Drive home safely, okay? Text me when you get there."

I hung up quickly before my voice could betray me.

The phone screen went dark. The rain kept falling. Somewhere inside the hospital, a door opened and closed, and a slice of warm light cut across the wet pavement before vanishing.

Once the call ended, I took a deep breath and tried to hold everything in. I pressed my back against the pillar. I closed my eyes. I told myself I was strong, that I had a plan, that I had sent the evidence, that the fixer would call me tomorrow, that my daughter would be born into something better than this.

But no matter how hard I tried, the tears finally spilled over.

They came without sound at first. Just heat on my cheeks, mixing with the cold rain, indistinguishable from the weather to anyone passing by. Then my shoulders began to shake. Then my breath came in short, ragged pulls that I couldn't control, couldn't quiet, couldn't stop.

I cried. I cried quietly, my body trembling under the weight of it all. The baby moved inside me, pressing a small hand or foot against the wall of my belly, and I covered the spot with my palm and held it there, and the contact made me cry harder because she was the only one reaching for me. The only one in the world who was reaching for me.

There I stood. A heavily pregnant woman, belly aching, surrounded by strangers coming and going from the hospital. Nurses ending their shifts, collars turned up against the rain. A man in a wheelchair being loaded into a van. A young couple running for the entrance, laughing, sharing a single umbrella. None of them looked at me. None of them stopped. And in that cold, indifferent world, under the awning of a hospital where my husband had just tended to another woman with a tenderness he had never once shown me, I cried until I had no more tears left in me.

The rain didn't stop. The parking lot lights buzzed their flat orange hum. And when the tears were finally gone, when my body had nothing left to give, I wiped my face with the back of my hand, straightened my coat over my belly, and walked to the curb to find a cab.

I had a plan. I had evidence. I had a daughter who would carry the Ferraro name.

That would have to be enough.