Chapter 3
PART 3:
Natalie appeared in Audrey’s life one week later.
Not as a secret.
As an announcement.
Dominic brought her to a charity luncheon and introduced her as a “family friend.”
She wore red lipstick, touched Dominic’s arm too often, and looked at Audrey’s pregnant belly with something close to disgust.
“You must be so tired,” Natalie said. “Carrying two babies looks… heavy.”
Audrey placed a hand over her stomach.
“It is.”
Natalie smiled.
“Dominic needs someone light around him.”
That night, Audrey cried in the nursery.
Dominic did not come in.
The coat was hanging on the chair beside the crib.
Audrey had ordered it from a seamstress before things became ugly.
A maternity coat for winter.
Warm enough for hospital trips.
Loose enough for twins.
Inside, she had asked the seamstress to embroider two small initials.
Not the full names.
Just the first letters.
One for each baby.
A private little hope stitched where no one else could see it.
She imagined wearing it home from the hospital with Dominic carrying one baby and her carrying the other.
She imagined snow outside.
She imagined being loved.
Two weeks before her due date, the coat disappeared.
Dominic said she must have misplaced it.
Audrey was too tired to argue.
But she knew.
She knew the same way a woman knows when her home is becoming unsafe before anyone says it plainly.
Then her blood pressure spiked.
Then the contractions came early.
Then everything moved too fast.
An ambulance.
A hospital bracelet.
Doctors telling her to breathe.
Nurses rushing around her.
Dominic arriving late, irritated, answering texts while Audrey begged him not to leave the room.
The twins were born too early.
Tiny.
Fighting.
One came out crying.
The other needed help.
Audrey remembered shouting, “Is she breathing?”
Then nothing.
When she woke up hours later, a nurse told her both babies were alive.
Fragile, but alive.
Audrey cried so hard the nurse cried too.
Dominic stood near the window looking at his phone.
“They’re small,” he said.
Audrey turned her head slowly.
“They’re premature.”
He sighed.
“This is going to be a lot.”
Not beautiful.
Not thank God.
Not they made it.
A lot.
That was the moment something inside Audrey finally stopped reaching for him.
Still, she had nowhere to go.
May you like
Or so he thought.
👉 But two months before the twins were born, Audrey had received a letter that changed everything Dominic believed about her.
