Part 3:

The Westchester house was beautiful enough to make Kate resent it.

Six bedrooms. Wide porch. Old trees. A nursery already painted in soft blue-green. A bedroom converted into a medical suite with an adjustable bed, IV stands, monitors, and a window overlooking a garden.

It was everything she needed.

And she hated needing it.

“This was Nina’s house?” she asked.

James stood in the nursery doorway, hands in his pockets.

“Yes. We bought it when we thought we might adopt. After treatment. After things settled.”

Kate looked at the two cribs.

“Did they ever settle?”

“No.”

That answer held more grief than a speech.

Sophia moved into the guest room down the hall. Their mother, Maggie, arrived the next day with casseroles, baby blankets, and the kind of practical love that did not ask permission before reorganizing a pantry. Beth set up a temporary legal office in the study.

Chemo started the following morning.

Dr. Crawford came with two nurses and a technician. They brought medication, charts, sterile equipment, and a brutal honesty Kate appreciated more than empty comfort.

“This will be difficult,” Dr. Crawford said. “Nausea, fatigue, hair loss, immune suppression. There will be days you hate everyone in this room.”

“I already do.”

“Good. Honesty is healthy.”

Sophia held one hand. Beth held the other. Maggie watched the twins. James stood in the doorway, present but careful not to claim a place he had not earned.

The infusion began cold.

Then burning.

Then heavy.

Kate closed her eyes.

“Talk,” she whispered. “Anyone. About anything.”

Beth began. “Richard was served at his office. In front of Vanessa.”

Kate opened one eye.

“Was he embarrassed?”

“Deeply.”

“Good.”

Sophia added, “Mom threatened to drive to Manhattan and slap him.”

Maggie called from the hall, “I still might.”

Kate smiled for the first time in days.

James spoke from the doorway. “My investigator found hotel receipts going back eight months. If Richard claims the affair started after your diagnosis, we can prove otherwise.”

Kate’s smile faded.

Eight months.

While she was pregnant.

While she was building bassinets and reading twin birth books and learning how to sleep with heartburn.

The medication pulled her under.

When she woke hours later, Sophia was knitting beside the bed.

“How long?”

“Six hours.”

“The girls?”

“Fed, changed, sleeping. Mom cried over their eyelashes for twenty minutes.”

Kate tried to sit up and nearly vomited.

Sophia handed her a basin before she could ask.
…
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