The room went quiet when I placed the ultrasound photo on the coffee table. My husband, Aleric, looked at it, then at me, while his mother stood beside the bassinet holding the three-month-old baby he had brought into our Greenwich home only days earlier.

lifted her chin.

“People will start saying the Sterling daughter-in-law has no compassion.”

I looked at Aleric again.

His expression gave me nothing.

So I stopped asking.

That night, while he worked in his home office, I went into our walk-in closet.
One of his suit jackets was hanging on the valet stand. I picked it up to put it into a dry-cleaning bag when my fingers brushed something stiff inside the breast pocket.

A folded document.

I opened it.

Sutton Place Women’s Clinic.

Upper East Side, New York.

Patient: