Chapter 151

Chapter 151
Anna POV

I opened the door to find Edward standing in the hallway, morning light streaming through the window behind him, catching on the edges of his hair and making him look softer than I'd ever seen him. He was holding two large paper bags from that place in the West Village, the one I'd mentioned exactly once during our marriage—God, two years ago?—when he'd asked what I wanted for breakfast and I'd been too surprised by the question to lie. The smell of fresh pancakes and bacon hit me immediately, warm and sweet and so deliberately thoughtful that my throat tightened.

"Hey," he said, and his voice was careful, like he was worried I might shut the door in his face. His eyes moved over me quickly—taking in my sleep-mussed hair, the sleeping dress, my bare feet on the cold floor—and I saw something flicker across his face. Not judgment. Something gentler. "You okay?"

I wasn't, actually. I'd been crying in my sleep again—I could feel the tight, swollen feeling around my eyes, the way my face felt raw and exposed—and I knew he could see it. But I stepped back and gestured him inside anyway, because refusing him now would mean explaining why I'd agreed to let him come in the first place, and I didn't have an answer for that. Not one I was ready to say out loud.

"I need to wash my face," I said, my voice coming out rougher than I'd intended. "Just—give me a minute."

He nodded and moved past me into the apartment, and I caught the scent of his cologne—something clean and expensive that I'd never been able to forget, no matter how hard I'd tried—mixed with the smell of coffee and maple syrup. I closed the door and stood there for a second, watching him set the bags down on my tiny kitchen counter with the same careful precision he brought to everything, like even this simple gesture deserved his full attention.

When I came back from the bathroom—face scrubbed, teeth brushed, eyes still red but at least no longer actively leaking—I found him standing by the window, looking out at the street below.

"You didn't have to do this," I said, gesturing at the bags on the counter, and he turned to look at me with an expression I couldn't quite read.

"I know," he said simply. "I wanted to."

The words settled between us, heavy with everything we weren't saying, and I had to look away first because the intensity in his eyes was too much, too close to the surface of something I wasn't ready to name. I moved to the counter and started unpacking the bags—blueberry pancakes, scrambled eggs, bacon, fresh fruit, two large coffees—and my hands were shaking slightly as I set everything out on the table.

He'd remembered. Not just that I liked blueberry pancakes, but how I took my coffee—two sugars, no cream—and the fact that I always asked for extra bacon because I liked it crispy. These were details I'd mentioned in passing, years ago, when we were still pretending our marriage might turn into something real. When I was still stupid enough to think that sharing small pieces of myself might make him care.

I sat down and picked up my fork, but I couldn't quite make myself eat yet. Edward settled into the chair across from me, and for a long moment we just sat there in silence, the food growing cold between us, both of us waiting for the other to speak first.

"I had a nightmare," I finally said, because the words were sitting in my throat like broken glass and I needed to get them out before they cut me from the inside. "About the baby."

His face changed immediately—something raw and wounded flickering across his features before he could hide it—and his hand moved across the table like he was going to reach for mine before he caught himself. "Anna—"

"No, let me—" I stopped, took a breath, tried to find the right words. "I need to tell you something. About what happened. About why I lost the baby."

He went very still, his whole body tensing like he was bracing for impact, and I could see his jaw working as he processed what I was saying. The morning light was streaming through my kitchen window, catching on the steam rising from our coffee cups, making everything look soft and gentle and completely at odds with what I was about to tell him.

"It wasn't an accident," I said, and my voice came out flat and cold, like I was reading from a script. Like if I let any emotion into the words, I'd shatter completely. "Six months ago, at the estate, when I was four months pregnant—Vera pushed me down the stairs."

I watched his face carefully as I said it, cataloging every micro-expression, every tiny shift in his features. First came confusion, like he'd heard the words but his brain couldn't quite process them. Then disbelief, his eyebrows drawing together, his mouth opening slightly like he was about to argue. And then—finally—understanding, followed immediately by something that looked like horror.

"What?" The word came out barely above a whisper, rough and broken, and he was staring at me like I'd just told him the sun had stopped rising. "What are you—no. No, that can't—"

"It was a Tuesday afternoon," I continued, my voice still eerily calm even as my hands started to shake. "You were at the office. I was coming down from the second floor, and Vera was at the bottom of the stairs. She smiled at me—this sweet, innocent smile—and she said something about how excited she was about the baby. And then she came up the stairs toward me, and when she got close enough, she just... pushed."

I could see it all again as I spoke—the momentary confusion as her hands connected with my chest, the split second of disbelief before gravity took over, the way the world tilted and spun as I fell. The stairs had seemed to go on forever, each impact sending fresh waves of pain through my body, and I remembered thinking, with absolute clarity, the baby the baby the baby on an endless loop until everything went dark.

"I remember the fall," I said, and now my voice was starting to crack, the careful composure I'd built beginning to fracture. "Every single second of it. The way my head hit the third step from the bottom. The way I could feel something wrong inside me, something tearing, something breaking. And when I woke up in the hospital and they told me the baby was gone, I told everyone it wasn't an accident. I told the doctors, I told your mother, I told you—"

"Stop." Edward's voice was raw, desperate, and when I looked at him I saw that his face had gone completely white, his eyes wide and dark with something that looked like pain. "Anna, stop, I can't—"

"You said I was confused," I continued, unable to stop now that I'd started, the words pouring out of me like blood from a wound. "You said I was looking for someone to blame because I couldn't accept that it was just bad luck, just one of those things that happens. You told me that accusing Vera wouldn't bring the baby back, that I needed to focus on healing, on moving forward." I laughed, and it came out bitter and broken. "You made me feel crazy. Like I was making it up. Like my grief had made me delusional."

He pushed back from the table so suddenly that his chair scraped loudly against the floor, and for a second I thought he was going to leave, going to walk out rather than face this. But instead he stood there, both hands braced on the edge of the table, his head bowed, his breathing harsh and uneven.