“We share three children,” she replied.
“Of course we speak.”
Charles leaned back and said he hoped Grant had stopped creating difficulties.
Melissa said her marriage was not company business.
The look he gave her lasted only a second, but it changed the feeling of the room.
That evening, she considered telling Grant about the conversation.
She decided against it because she did not want another argument about Charles.
At home, the children noticed her fatigue and her growing need for rest.
Lily asked whether the baby would come to live with them.
Melissa explained that the baby would live with Charles and Vivien because they were its intended parents.
Noah asked whether she would feel lonely afterward.
Melissa promised that she would still have the three of them.
She said it as confidently as she could.
Later, alone in bed, she stared at the ceiling and wondered whether she had mistaken determination for certainty.
A message arrived from Charles near midnight.
It asked whether she would attend a company gala despite her doctor’s advice to rest.
She wrote that she could not.
His reply contained only three words.
“We need alignment.”
She read them twice before turning off her phone.
Chapter 17: A Letter from Vivien
Vivien wrote a letter to Melissa shortly after the gala because she sensed their conversations had become strained.
She said she understood that gratitude could become a burden when it demanded constant reassurance.
She had spent years being asked whether she had accepted that she might never carry a pregnancy herself.
Each question had sounded compassionate and still managed to hurt.
When Charles proposed asking someone they knew, she initially said the arrangement should be handled entirely through professionals.
He assured her that the candidate was already interested and would be independently represented.
Vivien wanted to believe him because she was tired of hoping.
In the letter, she admitted that longing did not excuse carelessness.
She asked whether Melissa felt comfortable continuing their personal correspondence.
Melissa read it twice before replying.
She told Vivien that she appreciated the honesty but felt increasingly isolated at work.
She did not disclose private employment details, only that the boundaries between the arrangement and her job seemed unclear.
Vivien asked whether the clinic had offered a counselor.
Melissa said yes.
Vivien urged her to continue seeing the counselor regardless of whether anyone else thought it necessary.
Their messages became less frequent but more honest.
For a time, Melissa felt she could separate Vivien’s need from Charles’s authority.
