Chapter 11: What Jonas Wanted

The cramping had already started, low and heavy, and I knew a scan would show Marissa everything.

I put my hand over my mouth.

"I'm going to be sick," I said.

"Annabel, it will only take a moment," Marissa said, stepping toward me.

I ran for the powder room under the stairs and locked the door behind me.

I knelt over the toilet and made myself retch, and I made it loud.

"Mrs. Draper?" The family doctor knocked twice. "Can you open the door?"

"I can't stop," I said. "I haven't kept anything down since morning."

I let him hear me gag again.

Outside, Marissa lowered her voice, and I pressed my ear to the wood.

"She was fine at breakfast," Marissa said. "It's an act."

"It isn't an act," the doctor said. "Look at her color when she comes out."

"Dehydration, nausea and stress at ten weeks, Miss Keane."

"A scan on a frightened patient is how you get a miscarriage. I won't risk that on my record."

There was a long silence.

"Tomorrow," Marissa said, and I heard how it cost her.

When I finally came out, Jonas was standing at the foot of the stairs with a glass of water.

His eyes went over my face and stayed there for a moment.

"Ma'am," he said, and held out the glass.

Lawson spoke to me through my bedroom door that night.

"No more scans until the gala," he said. "I won't have you stressed into losing it."

"Thank you," I said, and I leaned my forehead against the wood.

He walked away, and I stood there and listened to the silence.

Wednesday night, the house slept.

I lay awake with a heating pad against my stomach and the clinic's pamphlet folded under my pillow.

*No intercourse for two weeks.*

I read it once more, and then I got up and opened my bedroom door.

Jonas was in the chair in the hall, as he had been every night.

He stood at once.

"Come in," I said. "Lock it behind you."

He came in, and I heard the key turn from the inside.

I had never given an order in that house, and he obeyed this one at once.

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