Gertrude barked out a harsh laugh, her sharp eyes scanning me like a cold predator. “Do not try to play the victim with me, because I know your little tricks far too well.”
“You are just dying of envy because the family is going abroad to enjoy themselves, so you want to ruin our plans,” she continued, tightening her grip on her purse. “The flights and the five star hotel are already paid for, and they are non refundable, so do not even think about stopping us.”
I turned to Dominic, expecting at least a sliver of humanity from the man I had shared my life with, but he refused to meet my eyes. He turned his back to me and muttered, “Come on, Valerie, just hang in there and go to your room to rest, it is probably just a stomach ache.”
“We will be back before you know it,” he added, though a week felt like an eternity when my heart was being squeezed by terror. Another contraction slammed into me, throwing me face down onto the cold floor as a gush of warm fluid soaked through my clothes.
“Dominic, help me, my water just broke,” I screamed, my voice choked and barely audible. “Please, just call an ambulance before you leave.”
A taxi horn blared from the driveway, and Gertrude waved her hand as if she were shooing away a bothersome insect. “The car is here, so let us hurry before we miss our flight, because she is old enough to call her own taxi to the hospital.”
Gertrude marched out, the sound of her suitcase wheels clicking against the floor like a hammer striking my heart. Felicity followed her cheerfully, leaving only Dominic standing hesitantly in the doorway for a single, fleeting second.
The doubt in his eyes vanished instantly as his cowardly nature took over. “I am sorry, Valerie, but I cannot contradict my mother, so please take good care of yourself while we are gone.”
He turned and dragged the final suitcase out of the house, leaving me frozen in disbelief as tears streamed down my face. I could not grasp how the man I had sacrificed everything for could treat me with such calculated cruelty.
“Lock both the locks, Dominic, just to be safe,” Gertrude’s voice floated in from the porch. “We do not want her following us to the airport to cause a scene, so let her give birth in peace inside.”