Prologue
Bailey Kingsley-Eckhart
I could hearthe voices coming from the other rooms in my house. They weren’t whispering, but they were definitely speaking in hushed volumes. They didn’t want to bother me. Little did they know that at that moment, nothing on Earth could’ve bothered me. A bomb could’ve gone off in the foyer and that wouldn’t have bothered me. I wouldn’t have cared. I didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything. All of mycarehad died.
I do care about one thing, I thought to myself as I fingered the locket that hung from the necklace around my neck. I cared about one thing. The ashes of my son that were now inside the locket. For seventeen weeks, I’d done my very best to keep him safe and make him feel loved. He was no longer safe inside of me. He no longer had a little body that was growing.
Nope.
His little heart, brain, and organs had all given up. Now he was just . . . ashes. A memory.
I sighed as I considered how I would move on from this day. If I had other children, I could throw myself into them. Icould get back into whatever our routine was, so they weren’t further traumatized by the loss of their little brother. But I didn’t have other children. After five years of marriage it was my first pregnancy. All I had was my husband, Xander. And truth be told, I didn’t even have him.
From the moment I happily produced the little stick with two pink lines and told him that I was pregnant, Xander started pulling back from me. He checked out. And that was even before the bloodwork and first sonogram revealed that the pregnancy more than likely wouldn’t be viable. My son hadlethal congenital malformations.
Xander was standing right next to me when the doctor said those words. Those words knocked the wind out of me. They almost knocked the life out of me. What I needed most in that moment was for my husband to hold me. That wasn’t what I got. What I got was the opportunity to watch Xander’s back as he left the room. Then he left the clinic . . . in the truck we’d ridden in together. Once I was dressed, I walked out of the building, stood in the parking lot, and cried. I was confused. I was so confused that I couldn’t even put together how I was supposed to get home.
The sweet nurses brought me back into the building and asked if there was anybody I could call to pick me up. I had family. I was the third of four sisters. My sisters and I were close. We didn’t have rivalries. We were down for each other. Even when we were annoyed or frustrated with one another, we were still cool. I could’ve called any of them or even my mama. Except that the year before, the four of them had relocated to Jackson Falls, Oregon, leaving me in Chicago with Xander. When I floated the idea of us relocating with them to Xander, he immediately shut the suggestion down. He didn’t have any intentions of living anywhere other than Chicago. He made it clear that if I wanted to move, I would have to do so without him.I wasn’t willing to leave my husband or break up my marriage. I stayed put in Chicago with only him and his family to lean on. I asked the nurses to call my mother-in-law.
Soon after we received the news about our son, Xander became an angry ghost. I became a shell of myself, the host for a baby that would soon return to his home with our father in heaven. The waiting game began. Seventeen weeks after conception, the waiting game ended.
My mother, my sisters, their husbands, and even my daddy flew into town to be with me during the procedure. Everybody was present and accounted for in the hospital’s waiting room. Everybody except Xander. I would’ve been mostly dead on the inside had it not been for my family, the online support group I found, and the tele-doc therapist who let me ramble stream-of-consciousness thoughts. Those three things were the biggest help in handling all of my thoughts and emotions. Xander’s absence still hurt, though. It cut deep and made a wound that I wasn’t sure would ever heal.
Commotion rang through the house, letting me know that something had happened. Those quiet voices had grown louder and there was movement headed toward the living room. A few seconds later, Xander appeared in the doorway. He crossed the room quickly.
I looked up at him from where I sat on the sofa. Took in his quilted puffer jacket, the hat pulled down on his head, the dark jeans, and the Tims leaving a puddle underneath him as the snow he’d picked up outside melted on my living room floor.
I held out the locket I’d been holding inside my clenched fist. “Here, this is for you.”
“What is it?”
“It’s a locket with Hart’s ashes. My mom had them made.”
“Hart?”
I stiffened at his question before taking a deep breath. “Yes. Hart. I named him Hart.”
“Hart Eckhart?” He had the nerve to chuckle. “I don’t know about that, Bailey.”
“Hart Kingsley. You said you didn’t want, and I quote, a dead baby named after you. I figured that meant last name as well, so I gave him my last name.”
He didn’t speak for a long minute and I was glad. Just the memory of the fact that he’d said that to me made me not want to hear his voice. The silence dragged on until he finally broke it.
“Listen, I know this ain’t the right time to do this. I know it. But there won’t ever be a right time to do it. You’re feelin’ like shit and you’re probably gonna be feelin’ like shit for a minute. At least you got your family here to support you.”
“Just say it.”
“I don’t wanna do this no more. I don’t wanna pretend no more. I want a divorce.”
My eyes flew up and found his. “What?”
“I want a divorce,” he repeated. “I have a girl. She’s having my baby . . . Xander Junior. He’s healthy. No issues. This family is . . .” He didn’t finish the thought. “My new family is the family I wanna concentrate on. I need to be free to do that.”
Throughout the five years of our marriage, every time things got tight for Xander, every time an outcome didn’t go his way, he threatened me with divorce. Being raised by a single mother with four daughters by four different fathers left an indelible mark on me. It left a strain and a shame on me. When I married Xander, I thought I would finally break the generational curse of unwed motherhood. My mother, grandmother, and even great-grandmother had all been single mothers. There was a joke in our family that while our last name was Kingsley, none of us could keep a man. We were Kingsleys with no King.
Somewhere in my mind, I decided that I was going to break the curse. I would be the first married Kingsley. The first daughter to have children under the covenant of marriage.
Xander knew that was important to me. In an effort to control me or to get the upper hand, he would frequently dangle my greatest fear in front of my face. And I would cave. I didn’t want a broken marriage. I would always give in to him. So many times he’d used my desire to save my marriage against me. But today was different. Today I didn’t give a shit.
