Chapter 1

1.

My best friend, Chloe, and I married into the illustrious Harrison family of Boston together.

I married my eldest son, Nathaniel, a celebrated genius surgeon at Mass General. She married the younger son, Caleb, a Hollywood A-lister.

On our third wedding anniversary, I was pregnant and fell down the stairs. My husband, Nathaniel, was with his college flame, Ava, helping her purebred cat give birth.

I called him, begging him to come home. He said, "Can you not be so dramatic? Ava's cat is having a difficult birth, it's a dangerous situation. Can't you have a little compassion?"

That night, the kittens were saved. My baby was not.

I looked at Chloe, who had stayed with me at the hospital all night, and whispered, "Chloe, I want a divorce."

She squeezed my hand tightly. "I'm with you. You leave, I leave. Let those two bastards ruin each other."

The moment those two men received the divorce papers from our lawyer, they lost their minds.

…

Just as I expected, after the lawyer sent the papers, I got a furious call from Nathaniel.

"Eleanor, can you stop being so unreasonable? Are you so damn insecure that you have to keep me chained to your side forever?"

Before I could answer, he unleashed a torrent of impatience. "I told you, Ava's cat was in distress. That’s her most beloved pet, and those are little lives on the line. Are you really that cold-hearted?"

"You have no sense of priority. You really had to pick now to get jealous?"

Hearing his icy tone, I let out a sad, bitter laugh.

My husband, Nathaniel, after a full week of silence, had finally condescended to call me back.

Never mind that last night, pregnant, I had called him eighteen times in agony after falling down the stairs.

He sent every single one to voicemail.

His only reply was a text with a few curt words: "Busy. What is it?"

I sent him a crying voice message, my voice trembling, "Nathaniel, I'm pregnant! I wasn't feeling well and I fell down the stairs... My stomach hurts so much, there's so much blood, what do I do? Are we going to lose our baby?"

Nathaniel never even listened to it. He just replied impatiently.

"Can't you handle things at home yourself? Do you have to call me for everything?"

"I'm at Ava's helping her cat deliver kittens. What could possibly be more important than these little lives?"

Nathaniel rarely listened to my voice messages and couldn't be bothered to read my texts.

He could, however, listen patiently to his "one that got away," Ava, complain for half an hour about her period cramps.

Meanwhile, if I, who have had claustrophobia since childhood, got trapped in an elevator for two hours and called him for help, it was considered an interruption.

But of course. How could I ever compare to Ava?

Nathaniel once told me I wasn't worth a single strand of Ava's hair.

So, of course, our baby wasn't as important as a cat's litter.

Chloe snatched the phone from my hand and roared at Nathaniel on the other end.

"Nathaniel! Eleanor fell last night and lost the baby! If you have any humanity left in you, you'll get your ass to the hospital right now!"

Of course, Nathaniel didn't come to the hospital to see me.

Because from the very beginning, he never believed I was actually pregnant.