Grace POV
The divorce papers felt like they weighed a thousand pounds.
Grace stood outside the courthouse steps with the envelope in her shaking hands. People walked past her. People with their lives still intact. People who didn't just sign away three years in the span of five minutes.
It was over.
She'd expected to feel relief. Some kind of release. Instead she felt hollow. Empty in a way that scared her. This was her marriage. This was the thing she'd believed in. The thing she'd woken up every morning trying to fix. And he'd signed it without even reading it.
Without reading it.
Grace walked down the steps in a daze. The London streets were crowded. Gray. Cold even though it was supposed to be warm outside. She didn't really know where she was going. Just walking. Just trying to move away from the building that had finalized her failure.
She made it three blocks before her stomach twisted.
At first she thought it was just anxiety. Just the weight of everything hitting her body. But then she remembered. Her period. When was her last period?
She stopped walking and tried to think. Three weeks ago? More? She'd been so focused on James and Victoria and the end of everything that she'd lost track of her body.
Grace found a pharmacy and walked in like someone in a dream.
The pregnancy tests were in aisle four. She grabbed a box without looking at it too closely. Just grabbed and moved to the counter. The cashier was young, maybe nineteen. She didn't ask questions. Just scanned it and took Grace's money.
The bathroom at a coffee shop two blocks away was empty.
Grace locked the door and sat on the toilet with the test in her hand. She waited for the timer. Sixty seconds. That's all it took to change your entire life. Sixty seconds.
Two pink lines.
She stared at them like they might change. Like if she waited long enough or believed hard enough or prayed hard enough, the second line would disappear and she'd go back to being the woman who'd walked into the courthouse that morning.
But it didn't disappear.
A baby.
James's baby.
She was carrying a child. A person. A life that had been created in a moment of tenderness that felt like it happened to someone else. A moment before he started texting Victoria. A moment before everything froze into ice.
Grace put the test down on the sink and looked at herself in the mirror.
She looked like a ghost. Pale. Thin. Broken.
She thought about telling him. Walking back to that apartment and saying "Surprise, you have a son or daughter on the way. Hope that doesn't interfere with your coffee meetings." She thought about Victoria. About how James would feel obligated to stay. How he'd resent her and this baby every single day for the rest of their lives. How this child would grow up knowing that their father didn't want them. Not really. Not the way it mattered.
Grace couldn't do that to anyone.
She grabbed her phone and called her sister.
"Hey, what's up?" Sarah answered on the second ring. She sounded happy. She sounded like everything was normal.
"Sarah, I need to come to Singapore."
There was a pause. "Like for a visit?"
"Like now. Tonight. I need to get on a plane tonight."
Sarah's voice changed. "Grace, what happened? Are you okay?"
Grace looked at the test. At the two pink lines that meant her whole life had just shifted. At the proof that she was about to do the most terrifying thing she'd ever done.
"I left James. The divorce is finalized. And I'm pregnant."
The silence on the other end stretched forever.
"Oh my god," Sarah finally said.
"I can't stay here. I can't be in this city where he is. I can't raise this baby watching him walk past with Victoria or some other woman. I just can't."
"Okay. Okay. Come to Singapore. I have the spare room. You can stay as long as you need."
Grace felt something crack open in her chest. Not in a good way. In the way where all the fear you've been holding back suddenly has permission to come out.
"Thank you," she whispered.
"When can you be at the airport?"
Grace looked at her watch. It was 3 PM. She looked at the pregnancy test. She looked at herself in the mirror.
"I can be there by seven. Can you check flights?"
"Already on it. Text me when you're leaving your apartment so I know you're coming."
Grace hung up and held the phone against her chest.
Seven hours.
She had seven hours to pack her entire life. Seven hours to walk back into that apartment and get her things while James was probably at the office. Seven hours to become someone else.
She threw the pregnancy test in the trash and walked out of the coffee shop.
The walk home felt like walking through water. Everything was slow and heavy. She kept thinking about the baby. About how small it must be right now. About how it didn't know any of this yet. It just existed in the dark, unaware that its mother had just made a decision that would define both of their lives.
The apartment was empty when she got there.
James was gone. Just his signature on a piece of paper proving that he'd decided she was worth nothing.
Grace grabbed her largest suitcase and started throwing things into it. Not carefully. Not thoughtfully. Just things. Clothes. Books. Her laptop. Her important documents. She packed like she was escaping something. Because she was.
She was escaping the woman she'd been.
The woman who waited for James to notice her.
The woman who planned anniversary mornings and bought fancy robes and waited for love to be returned.
That Grace was gone.
She left a note on the kitchen counter. Not because she owed him one. But because she needed to say something.
"I'm leaving. I'm not coming back. Don't try to find me. You made your choice and so have I."
She didn't sign it.
By 6:45 PM, Grace was in a taxi heading to the airport.
Her phone buzzed. A message from James.
"Where are you? I'm home."
She didn't respond.
Another message. "Grace?"
She turned her phone off.
The airport was crowded with people traveling. People going places. People starting over. She got in line for her gate. One way ticket to Singapore. She paid cash. She had maybe two hundred pounds left to her name but she had a sister who'd help her. She had a baby who needed her. She had a future that didn't include this city or this man.
The gate attendant called for boarding.
Grace stood up and got in line.
She was about to walk onto that plane. About to leave London. About to leave James. About to become someone completely different from who she'd been that morning.
As she handed her ticket to the attendant, a man bumped into her shoulder. He turned around to apologize.
It was Simon.
James's best friend.
"Grace? What are you doing here?"
Her heart stopped. She didn't know if Simon knew about the divorce. She didn't know what James had told him.
"I'm leaving," she said simply.
"What do you mean you're leaving? Where are you going?"
"Far away."
She turned back to the attendant and walked through the gate before Simon could say anything else. She didn't wait to hear if he called after her. She just walked down the jet bridge toward the plane.
Toward her new life.
Toward the baby she was carrying that James would never know about.
The plane door closed behind her at midnight.
Grace found her seat and sat by the window.
As the plane pushed back from the gate, she looked out at London disappearing below her. She pressed her hand against her stomach and whispered something to the tiny life growing there.
"I'm sorry your father is who he is. But I promise you this. I will never make you feel invisible. I will never make you question your worth. I will build a life for us that doesn't depend on anyone else."
The plane lifted off the ground.
Grace watched the city get smaller and smaller until it was just lights in the darkness.
Then she closed her eyes and finally, for the first time all day, she let herself cry.