I Aborted Our Baby The Day He Celebrated His Mistress Birthday Chapter 06

I Aborted Our Baby The Day He Celebrated His Mistress Birthday Chapter 06

This was the first time Julian had ever sent me anything but [K].

I smiled. Couldn’t help wondering what his face looked like right then, standing over the coffee table.

My phone kept buzzing until the screen was warm against my palm. The messages piled up so fast they

blurred together.

[Eleanor, where are you? Don’t do this.]

[A divorce? And you had an abortion? Have you lost your mind?!]

[I won’t forgive you for this.]

[Answer me. Where the hell are you?]

[Is this some kind of joke? Eleanor, this isn’t funny.]

[Nothing’s going on between me and Harper.]

[Come home. Please. Can we just talk?]

[Just tell me where you are. Please. Eleanor, where did you go?]

Anger first. Then confusion. Then fear. One after another, and not a single reply from me.

My fingers hovered over the screen. Two years ago, trapped under the rubble, I’d done the same thing – typing one message after another with shaking hands.

Over three hundred messages. And just as many [K]s.

Back then I was afraid of dying. Afraid of the pain. Afraid I’d never see him again.

Now I wasn’t afraid of anything.

The cabin announcement came on all devices had to be off for takeoff.

–

I blocked Julian’s number. Deleted his contact. One tap, then another, and he was gone.

The plane climbed.

Below me, the city I’d known my whole life shrank to a scattering of lights, then to nothing.

I closed my eyes, and the thought of the baby rushed back in the one who was gone now. A heavy lump

formed in my throat before the tears even started.

I used to picture it all the time – the three of us. Weekend camping trips, our little boy chasing fireflies, me

chasing after him, Julian at the grill pretending to be in charge.

But I couldn’t keep him.

I couldn’t bring a child into a home where his father’s heart already belonged to another woman.

I couldn’t let him grow up watching his mother disappear in plain sight, watching his father orbit another

woman as if she were the sun.

I couldn’t let him learn what I learned – that love could look like silence, and silence could hurt worse than

anything.

Letting him go was the only mercy I had left to give. To him, and to myself.