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.

the calendar on my phone and counted backward.

January.

That January, Aleric had supposedly spent twenty days in Tokyo negotiating a merger for Sterling Holdings.

I folded the document carefully.

Placed it exactly where I had found it.

Hung the jacket back up.

Then I went downstairs.

Eleanor was still playing with the baby.

He was awake now, staring upward with large dark eyes.

“Look at those eyes,” she said.

Estelle smiled.

“Who does he resemble?”

“Like Aleric when he was a baby,” Eleanor answered automatically.

The moment the words