Chapter 2
PART 2:
When her friends asked why there was still no baby, Lauren smiled and said, “We’re trusting the timing.”
When Richard’s mother left baby clothes on their porch, Lauren folded them and put them away.
When Richard came home late smelling like perfume, she asked if he was tired.
When he snapped, “Maybe your body just doesn’t know how to be a wife,” she went to the bathroom, locked the door, and cried with the water running.
She protected him.
Even when he did not deserve it.
The doctor tightened his grip on the folder.
“Mr. Hale, I strongly recommend—”
Richard cut him off.
“I give permission. Open it.”
The hallway held its breath.
Lauren looked at the doctor’s hand.
Then she pointed gently to the folded line inside the file.
“Open his file,” she said.
Richard’s face hardened.
“What are you doing?”
Lauren did not look at him.
“Open it.”
The doctor’s eyes softened with something almost like pity.
He stepped forward and opened the folder.
Richard glanced at the first page.
His smile vanished.
The secretary’s arms tightened around the little girl.
The boy stopped fidgeting.
The doctor looked at Richard and said quietly, “Has your wife still not told you?”
Richard went pale.
“Told me what?”
Lauren closed her eyes for one second.
And for the first time all morning, the pain on her face looked older than the marriage itself.
Six years earlier, Lauren had painted a small bedroom pale yellow.
Richard had laughed at her then, wrapping his arms around her from behind.
“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” he said.
But he smiled when he said it.
Back then, he still kissed her forehead in grocery store aisles.
He still held her hand during Sunday brunch.
He still said “when we have kids,” not “if.”
For the first year, they were hopeful.
For the second year, they were nervous.
By the third year, hope became a calendar, a thermometer, a drawer full of pregnancy tests, and silence after every negative result.
Lauren went to every appointment.
Blood work.
Ultrasounds.
Hormone panels.
Painful procedures with names she had to Google in parking lots because Richard said he was too busy to come inside.
Every time, the results came back normal.
Not perfect.
But normal.
“You should both be tested,” the doctor told them gently.
Richard laughed at the suggestion.
“I don’t need testing,” he said. “My family has no problems with that.”
Lauren remembered the way the doctor paused.
Not judging.
Just waiting for Richard to become a better man.
May you like
He never did.
👉 For years, Lauren carried the blame alone — but Richard had refused the one test that could have exposed everything…
