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“Yes.” My voice comes out quiet but calm.
After a long moment of silence, he shakes his head. “Lucia, listen to me. I know you think you love him. I know you think this can work. But a baby changes everything. You’re not just risking yourself anymore. You’re risking a child.”
“I understand that. Can you just stop, please?”
“Does Marco know you’re pregnant?”
I hesitate, guilt flitting through me. “I haven’t found time to tell him.”
“And what do you think he’ll promise you and your baby?” Mason’s voice sharpens. “Will he vow to protect you and keep you safe? Look where that’s gotten you. You just crashed your car!”
“That’s not his fault.”
“Isn’t it?” Mason lurches forward, his eyes intense. “He’s the reason you’re in danger. The reason your friend is gone. The reason you can’t sleep or eat or think straight. And now, you’re bringing a child into that? Into his world of violence and blood?”
He’s lashing out, each word launched in the hope that he convinces me of my folly. The sting of truth hits me hard, but I can also hear the jealousy that distorts his tone.
A spark ignites in my mind.
“Mason…how did you know Jenna was taken?”
He recoils. “What?”
I struggle to sit up. “Do the police know Jenna was kidnapped and who did it? No one else seems to know.”
“It came up in my investigation.” He clears his throat.
“Tell me about the case. Do you know where she is?”
His jaw tightens. “We’re working on it.”
“You have resources. Use them. Where is she, Mason?”
“Stop, Lucia!” With that, he storms after the doctor.
In the deafening silence he leaves behind, I catalogue the things that don’t fit.
Mason knows Jenna was taken. When I asked him about finding her, he said, “We’re working on it.” That implies a case file and an official investigation. But if Jenna’s disappearance had been officially logged as an abduction, detectives would have come to the hospital to question me.
The cops would have established a paper trail, but they haven’t.
’Which means either Mason’s running an investigation off-book, or someone fed him information they shouldn’t have. And the only people who know what happened to Jenna are Marco and the people who took her.
The realization smacks me in the face.
Soon, the doctor returns with Mason in tow. They both wear strange looks that I can’t read, their eyes blank, their jaws set tight.
I immediately sense that something’s wrong.
“Uh, Ms. Romano.” He shows me a chart. “You’re not pregnant. Your hormone levels were a result of extreme emotional and physical stress.”
“No. I have all the symptoms.”
The doctor points at the chart. “That’s pseudocyesis. Your expectations triggered your symptoms. We have your negative test right here. You’ll feel better with some rest.”
My fingers take the paper, and what I read hits me hard. A deep disappointment rifles through me, and I fold the results and shove them into my bag.
Not pregnant. The symptoms were real—the nausea, the exhaustion, the missed cycle—but the cause was my own body reacting to months of sustained terror and grief. Pseudocyesis. A psychosomatic response. My body believed what my mind feared and produced the evidence to match.
