“Goodbye, Jarrod,” I said, shaking my head in wonder. Who called wanting to know what type of cookies his kids liked best? He’d been calling every so often since I left two days ago. Some of his queries were legitimate but others, not so much, and I wondered if he was simply calling because he missed me.

“Hold on, the children want to say hello,” he stated just before I hung up.

“Laurel, it’s Ana. When are you coming home?”

I smiled, feeling appreciated. “I’ll be home this weekend, Ana.”

“But that’s days away!” her twin complained.

“I know, sweetie, but I need to be with my mom right now,” I explained. Yesterday, when Jarrod had called—one of the times he’d called—they had said the same thing.

“Okay then,” Anabelle brooded. “And we’ve taken care of Dad like you said.”

“She told you to take care of me?” I heard Jarrod ask in the background and I groaned. That was supposed to be a conversation between us, not for their father to hear.

“I’ve got to go, kids,” I told them. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

“Wait, Daddy wants to talk back to you,” Isabelle stated.

Before I could pretend I didn’t hear and hang up, Jarrod was already back on the line. “So you told the kids to take care of me,” he drawled.

“Uh…well, you sometimes work too much.”

“I took the week off to stay with them,” he responded.

“Oh,” I said in surprise. “You didn’t have to do that. Mrs. Philpott said she would keep an eye on them for you.”

“If you’re not here for them, then I should be.”

“Okay,” I said, remembering how he’d been so distanced from the children a month ago. “I have to go now,” I informed him. My mother watched me from the hospital bed and the conversation was becoming a little too stilted. She was already questioning if everything was going well with my marriage, although I insisted it was a business arrangement.

“I’ll let you go then.”

“Bye, Jarrod.”

I hung up and took a deep breath before returning to my mother’s bedside, reclaiming the chair that I’d been sitting in while talking to her before Jarrod’s phone call.

“Everything okay?” she asked me, her eyes full of curiosity.

“Yes, they are managing fine without me,” I answered. “You look a little wan. How is the pain?”

“We’re not talking about me, child,” Mom returned with a serious expression. “I want to know about you and how you’re holding up.”

I stared down at my hands, plucking at the bed linen. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Okay, I’ll say it for you then. You’ve fallen in love with that man and his children.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” I tried to laugh off her supposition. “This is a business marriage.”

“It started out that way,” she agreed. “But I can see it has become much more for you. You should see the way your eyes light up when you talk about him and the kids. There’s no doubt in my mind that you love them.”

At her words, I could no longer pretend. I covered my face with my hands in frustration and despair. “I don’t know what to do about it. This wasn’t supposed to happen.”

“It’s not necessarily a bad thing,” she tried to assure me.

“It is!” I cried. “There can never be anything between Jarrod and me. This marriage is fake, but I feel like we’re duping the kids. Things changed on our honeymoon and…and it’s hard being around him when I can’t tell him how I truly feel.”

“How do you know he doesn’t feel the same?”

I shook my head. “He can’t. He still wants this marriage to end after ten years.”

“Then you have ten years for him to fall in love with you.”

“I’m not going to hope for something that might not happen. I’ll forget about him and focus on the kids.”

Her doctor walked in to do another check-up, and I was grateful for the interruption. The doctor had noted a slight concern in the surgery as my mother’s blood pressure had dropped significantly during the procedure.

She was sleepy, so when the doctor left, I decided to go home and give her time to rest. She squeezed my hand and told me to remember Jarrod and the kids needed me as much as I needed them. I drove back to the house with that thought in mind. Our contract was based solely on what the kids needed from me, and Jarrod and I should have never become a part of that. I needed to find a way to eliminate him from the picture and focus on the girls. What did it matter if he loved me or not?

But it mattered. It mattered so much. I was dreaming foolishly about how life would be different for all of us if our marriage became genuine. I did have misgivings about sometimes feeling that we were duping the kids to believe the lie we had created for their benefit. Would they grow to resent us if they found out?

At the house, I was bored as I ate dinner alone. I missed Ana’s and Isa’s giggling, missed having them around me, and having something to do. My life would be empty without them if I were to end our contract. I was tempted to and stay as far away from Jarrod as possible, but I couldn’t do that to the girls. I also loved them and wanted to be a part of their lives. I wanted to watch them grow up into young ladies, to realize their dreams. I wanted to be there when they had their first boyfriends and first heartbreaks. I wanted to snap pictures on their prom night, to be there to send them off to college.

That night as I lay in bed, I reflected on Jarrod hiding his marriage from Pearl. He had told me he didn’t tell anyone, but I knew he had hidden it from her specifically, which to me was a dead giveaway they were involved in more than merely a business relationship. Why else would he have felt the need to remove his wedding ring when he was at work? When I’d seen him without his ring, I’d felt betrayed, but he wasn’t mine for me to feel he had betrayed me. A few minutes of sex on a private beach on a romantic night did not entitle me to feel betrayal. Even though he was technically my husband.

I had a fitful night in bed, thinking long and hard. If not for the kids, I would have quit, but that way of thinking didn’t even make sense because without them, this arrangement wouldn’t have existed. When I eventually succumbed to sleep, the new day had started.

The ringing of the telephone woke me. My eyes were gritty from lack of sleep, and I groaned and buried my head in the pillow, wishing the annoying ringing away. I sighed in contentment when the phone rang off and I almost fell asleep again before it sounded once more. I grappled for the phone on the bedside table and pressed the answer button without looking at the screen.

“Hell0,” I barked into the phone, my voice muffled from the pillow my face was pressed into.

“Is this Laurel Snow?” an unfamiliar feminine voice asked.

“Yes, this is she. Who am I speaking to?”

“This is Nurse Edwards from the St. Joseph’s Memorial Hospital,” the woman answered. “How soon can you get to the hospital?”

“Umm,” I struggled out of my sleep and sat up in bed. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand. Is something wrong with my mother?”

“We’d rather speak to you in person. Ms. Snow,” the nurse insisted. “How soon can you come in?”

“I probably need half an hour to get there,” I responded, scrambling out of bed. “Can you at least tell me if she’s okay? Her blood pressure hasn’t dropped again, has it? I know Dr. Peters said that was a concern the last time he checked on her.”

“Dr. Peters will explain everything once you are here,” Nurse Edwards replied.

Frustrated by the lack of a response, I hung up and ran to the bathroom to take a quick shower. The bypass grafting surgery performed on my mother was supposed to have helped reduce the risks involved with her coronary heart disease. I had thought of it as a magical fix, that once she had the procedure she would recuperate and get well, but I was learning the healing process took time.

After I showered and dressed, I grabbed my car keys and drove quickly to the hospital. I was pulled over by a police officer, who only let me off without writing me a speeding ticket because I explained I was in a hurry to get to the hospital. He left a warning about speeding, and I slowed down, wishing there was no speed limit to obey even though I knew its purpose was for my safety.

At the hospital, I found a parking spot and hastened into the building, stopped at the front desk, and explained that I had been called in. Nurse Edwards was working at the front desk and led me to an office where she knocked, explaining nothing to me.

“Come in.” I heard Dr. Peter’s voice from inside the room.

Nurse Edwards pushed the door open and motioned for me to step inside. “Dr. Peters, Ms. Snow is here,” she explained, and the doctor looked up from a file on his desk. He was a tall man who looked to be in his late forties but with a head full of white hair, surprising at such a young age.

“Thanks, Nurse Edwards,” he stated, and when the nurse left, waved me over to have a seat. “Ms. Snow, have a seat.”

“Thank you,” I said nervously and sat, clutching my bag in my lap. “Is there something wrong, Dr. Peters? The nurse wouldn’t say. The surgery didn’t help? If she needs another, it doesn’t matter. We’ll pay for it.”

“I’m sorry, but your mother suffered a heart attack last night,” he stated heavily.

“Oh, my God!” I exclaimed in shock. “How bad was it?”

“Your mother passed away, Miss. Snow,” he said finally. “That’s why we’ve called you. We want you to see the body and formally identify it before we take it to the morgue.”

“No, you must be mistaken,” I said in shock, rising to my feet. “I saw her last night. I was there when you checked on her. She was fine, she was recuperating.”

“And that’s true,” he explained calmly. “But five to ten percent of patients who undergo a surgery like your mother have a heart attack either at the time of the operation or shortly after. It’s unfortunate this happened to your mother, but we tried everything we could to save her.”

Before he finished speaking, the tears were streaming down my face. I placed a hand over my mouth to cover the sob that tore from me. My heart felt like it was eating itself from the inside. My mother couldn’t be dead. She just couldn’t. She was the only one I had. What would I do without her?