She laughed, but it came out broken. More like a sob. "I thought I was hiding it better than that."
"You were. But I pay attention."
Grace closed her eyes. Leaned her head back against the wall. For a long moment, she didn't say anything. Just breathed. In and out.
"Seven weeks," she said finally. "Maybe eight. I haven't been to a doctor yet."
Seven weeks. The timeline confirmed what I'd already calculated. This was Marcus's baby. Conceived before he left, before Emma, before everything fell apart.
"Does he know?"
Grace opened her eyes. The look in them made something twist in my chest.
"He blocked my number." Her voice was flat. Hollow. "Changed his email. I tried for three days to reach him, and he's just… gone. Like I never existed."
My hands curled into fists against my thighs. The anger came slow, the way it always did with me, building in my chest like pressure behind a closed door. Marcus hadn't always been like this. I remembered how he'd looked at her in the early years, how he'd driven up every weekend, how Grace's whole face used to change when she talked about him. But somewhere along the way, that version of Marcus had disappeared. He started taking her for granted while she rearranged her life to fit into the spaces he left.
But this was something else. This was cruelty dressed up as indifference.
"He's engaged to Emma now." Grace's voice cracked on the name. "I saw it on Instagram. Three weeks after he left me, he proposed to someone else. And I'm here, pregnant with his baby, and I can't even tell him because he's erased me so completely I don't exist anymore."
I didn't say anything. What was there to say? Sorry wouldn't help.It'll be okaywould be a lie. Anything I could offer felt inadequate against the weight of what she was carrying.
So I just stayed. Sat on the bathroom floor with her, shoulder pressed against the wall, and let the silence hold us both.
After a while, Grace took a shaky breath.
"I'm scared, Owen." The admission came out small. Vulnerable. Nothing like the competent, capable woman who ran a B&B. "I'm scared and I don't know what I'm doing and I don't have anyone to help me figure it out."
"You have me."
The words came out before I could second-guess them.
Grace looked at me. Her eyes were wet, her face blotchy, her hair still damp from where I'd gathered it back.
"Owen…" She shook her head. "You don't have to do this. This isn't your problem."
"You're right. It's not my problem." I held her gaze. "It's my friend's problem. And that makes it mine too."
She stared at me for a long moment. Then something in her crumpled, and she was crying. Not the controlled tears of someone trying to hold it together. Real crying, the kind that shakes your whole body, that comes from a place so deep you can't stop it once it starts.
I pulled her close. Let her cry against my shoulder, one hand cradling the back of her head the way I'd done the night Marcus left. A familiar instinct, automatic and steady, even as somethingtight and helpless settled in my chest. I couldn't fix this. Couldn't take it away. All I could do was hold her and stay.
She smelled like cinnamon and soap and fear.
"He blocked my number," she said again, muffled against my shirt. "Eleven years, and he blocked my number."
"I know."
"I can't do this alone."
"You're not going to." I tightened my arms around her. "I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere."
Eventually, the tears stopped.
Grace pulled back, wiping her face with the heels of her hands, trying to compose herself. I helped her stand, guided her out of the bathroom, and into the kitchen. Got her a glass of water. Found a clean dish towel for her to dry her face.
The breakfast service had somehow continued without us. I could hear Elena in the dining room, covering for Grace's absence with the easy competence of someone who'd been doing this for years. Mrs. Patterson's voice floated through the doorway, complimenting the scones.
