After My Husband's Illegitimate Son's Future Call, I Divorced

The day Marcus Fox said he'd gone bankrupt, I got a phone call from the future.

I'm Marcus Fox's son.

Joy flooded through me, and without thinking I assumed he was our child.

He gave a cold little laugh.

Don't be stupid. You don't even have a womb, so how could you give birth? I'm the only child of Anne Pruitt and Marcus Fox, the sole heir to the family. You're nothing.

My eyes went wide, and I shot back on instinct.

"Impossible. Marcus would never cheat on me, not if his life depended on it!"

I said that because.

When I nearly died in the earthquake, he threw himself over me, coughing up blood as the rubble struck him, refusing to let go until I was safe.

When I wasn't recovering, when I nearly went into shock, he gave me a lethal dose of his own matched blood.

He loved me that much. He couldn't cheat.

But the laughter on the other end only grew louder.

"Foolish woman. Let me show you what you look like now. Resting comfortably in the psychiatric hospital, are you?"

The image shifted, and I saw the me of the future.

Skin and bone, out of my mind.

My heart dropped, and he pressed on without mercy.

"The day my dad lied to you about the bankruptcy, he said you couldn't afford a child and tricked you into an abortion. After that you could never have children again. Then my mom and I moved right into your house, out in the open, and all you could do was watch the three of us be happy together."

"My dad really loves my mom so much. She'd pull some little trick, and he wouldn't even hear you out. He just shipped you off to the sanatorium in Southridge. Locked you in there your whole life and never once came to see you."

"Oh, right. Here's one more thing to tell you."

My hand trembled as I pressed the speaker button.

"That man with you now is Marcus Fox from ten years in the future. Want to guess whether he'd choose you if he had to do it all over again?"

...

The static swelled all at once, the voice cutting in and out.

A single beep, and then nothing.

When it hit me, I shot up and ran downstairs.

And there was Marcus, who'd just gone down to make me soup.

"Why are you down here? And without a coat. What if you catch cold?"

He quickly set down the cup, took off his jacket and draped it over me, his voice full of reproach.

As if the man on the phone couldn't possibly be him.

I wiped my eyes and looked at him with a smile.

"I just came to see if the soup was ready. I'm so thirsty."

He gave the tip of my nose an indulgent little flick.

"It'll be ready in a minute."

My eyes drifted, and they landed on the takeout chicken soup packed up in the corner. My heart dropped.

"Isn't there already some right there?"

The words were barely out when Marcus swept me up and carried me toward the bedroom.

"That one got scorched. I'll throw it out later. You get back to the room now. You're pregnant, you can't let yourself get cold."

I went rigid.

Marcus stopped too, right where he stood.

"I never told you I was pregnant."

The air was silent for several seconds before he spoke, a little awkwardly.

"What could you ever keep from me? I saw the test report you hid in the drawer. Get back to the room. Stop treating your own body like it doesn't matter."

With that, he carried me carefully back to bed and tucked the covers in around me with such care.

Marcus leaned in for a goodnight kiss, the way he always did.

But I flinched away on instinct.

He frowned slightly, then let it go, glancing at his watch.

"There's nothing left in the house you like to eat. I'll go pick something up, I'll be back in ten minutes. If you get sleepy, go on and sleep."

The door slammed shut.

Only then did I notice one side of the pillow was already soaked with my tears.

Because of that pregnancy report. I'd been busy answering the phone, and hadn't had time to put it in the drawer.

He really was the Marcus Fox from ten years later.

I broke, and went downstairs. I wanted to see exactly what he was going to do.

But I'd barely reached the bottom when I heard a sweet, cloying voice.

"Marcus, when do the baby and I get to come to the house? He says he misses his daddy so much, wants to see you every single day, don't you, sweetie?"

A soft, babyish voice came through, and I froze.

It sounded so much like the voice on the phone just now.

Marcus strode to the door, not noticing me behind him at all.

He gave a doting little laugh and said,

"You're cuter as a little kid. Once you grow up you turn into such a pain, ha."

The words had barely left him when his hand went still on the turning key.

"How long have you been standing there?"

Something ruthless surfaced in Marcus's eyes, and I thought of the woman I'd seen in that video.

The moment I understood that this man, who had once risked his life for me, truly had cheated.

My legs gave out, and I fell down the stairs.

"Ah!"

The world spun. I opened my eyes through the tearing pain.

My hands were covered in blood, yet Marcus only stared at me for two seconds before he began to sigh.

"Looks like there's nothing to be done. This baby can't be saved either. Sophie Pruitt, I owe you."

After that, I couldn't make out anything anymore.

Marcus scooped me up and rushed straight to the hospital.

In my daze I even heard that woman's voice.

"Marcus, if I just sit here in the car like this, she won't make a scene after she sees me, will she?"

Marcus laughed softly.

"She's passed out. It's on the way anyway. I'll drop her at the hospital now. Hurry and drink the chicken soup. You need to take good care of yourself all these years. Having kids left you with health problems, and if you don't rest, the headaches and back pain later will kill me to see."

The two of them talked like an old married couple, about things we had never once shared.

I don't know how long it was before I opened my eyes.

Marcus's eyes were red.

"Sweetheart, the baby's gone. I'm sorry."

The anesthesia hadn't worn off yet. I didn't even have the strength to open my mouth.

He dropped to his knees in front of me.

"I made the decision myself. The doctor said they had to remove your womb, and I agreed. You know it too, your life matters most! I don't care whether we have a child, it's you I love."

A bitterness spread through my mouth, and a single tear slid from the corner of my eye.

He knew. He knew how much this baby meant to me.

I'd been frail since birth, my body barely able to carry a child. Three years married to him, and I could no longer count the pills I'd swallowed, the needles I'd taken.

But none of it mattered to him. Not the man he used to be, not the man he'd become.

Neither of them ever cared what it cost me.

Not the night I drove out into a downpour at three in the morning to collect him from some dinner.

Not the three months I spent begging people, cashing in every favor, to land the funding that saved one of his deals.

And least of all did it matter that today, the day I learned he was bankrupt, I knelt at my parents' door for a whole day to beg the ten million he needed. In the end it was nothing but a joke.

Marcus lifted my hand into his. I didn't have the strength to pull it back.

"Don't worry. I've already found you a professional nurse. You'll recover in no time, and then I'll take you to Iceland to see the northern lights, the trip you've always wanted."

Their conversation from last night surfaced in my mind on its own.

I already had the answer to that phone call.

Marcus still wouldn't choose me.

I sighed. And all at once, I understood.

When I said nothing, he assumed I was still angry. But he didn't try to coax me anymore.

Of course. Ten years from now, Marcus had everything he wanted, and no patience left for soothing anyone.

"Rest well. I'll go heat up the chicken soup for you."

I caught sight of the bowl on the corner of the table. Only half left.

He hadn't even bothered to keep up the act. He was giving me what someone else had already drunk from.

I pulled together everything I had left and got out one word.

"Get out!"

Marcus stood over me, too guilty to meet my eyes.

"All right. I know you're angry. I'll come back when you've calmed down. I made that soup for hours, so make sure you drink it. I'll have someone bring it in."

Then he walked out.

As my mind blurred, I began to see things that weren't in my memory.

"Marcus! It's her or me. Choose!"

I saw everything in the house smashed to pieces, a woman clutching a child and sobbing, while I hurled things at them like a lunatic.

Then, a crack.

Suddenly I was my future self, and when his palm landed across my face, the pain burned.

"If you're sick in the head, go get treated! You can't have kids, so what, I'm supposed to waste my whole life playing along with you?"

The Marcus in front of me was a stranger, so much so that I trembled.

I asked him through my tears.

"You promised. You said if you ever cheated, you'd die in front of me."

His cold laugh cut sharper than anything.

"Are you an idiot? That's a line you feed a three-year-old. I love you, but not enough to die, and not enough to throw away the rest of my life's happiness. When I'm old I want someone to inherit what I've built, children and grandchildren around my knee."

The pain in my chest kept climbing, and the world spun again.

The scene changed. This time, it was that sanatorium.

Someone shoved me to the floor. The cold bit into me, and it hurt to the bone.

"I didn't push him!"

Marcus clenched his fist, fury pressed between his brows.

"He's just a child. Are you saying he's lying? How did I never see how vicious you are, that you can't even stand a little boy!"

"I already agreed to keep them set up elsewhere. I told you I wouldn't divorce you. And still you won't let it go. You won't be satisfied until they're dead, will you!"

I looked at him, and understood.

Nothing I said would ever change his mind.

After a long silence, he tossed a hospital gown at me.

"You stay here and recover. Without my permission, you're not to come out and bother them."

In the last second before the door closed, a fierce will to live drove me to my knees, begging him through tears.

"I was wrong. I'll divorce you, I won't cling to you anymore, just let me go!"

But Marcus only looked at me, his eyes flat and cold.

"Now you know you were wrong? Too late. Don't worry, you'll live just fine in here."

I clung to his leg with everything I had, refusing to let go.

But in the end, he shook me off without mercy.

The closed door warped before my eyes, and my whole life began to spin past me like a lantern turning.

From the wedding, to the affair, to being locked away.

To dying in the end on a cold operating table.

The last thing my mind fixed on was Marcus in his old age.

"I was wrong. I really do know I was wrong. I'm sorry for what I did to you."

Tears streamed down his aged face as he stood before my grave, not a single soul beside him.

Maybe he'd learned the truth. Maybe he regretted it.

It didn't matter anymore.

The dream ended, and I opened my eyes.

That woman stood at the foot of my bed, holding the child, and suddenly dropped to her knees.

"Please, let us have this, my son and me. Raising a child alone is just too hard!"

Only then did I get a clear look at her.

Delicate, like a flower ready to wilt at any moment.

The child cried without stopping in her arms. I was quiet for a few seconds, then spoke.

"All right."

She clearly hadn't expected me to agree so fast. Her eyes filled with confusion.

I picked up my phone and sent my mother a message.

"Marcus cheated. He had my uterus taken out without asking me."

All I remembered was that in the dream, when I didn't agree, this woman had pinched the child hard.

And then Marcus's revenge began.

This time, I'll give them what they want.

The woman lowered her head, the child suddenly wailed, and Marcus burst through the door.

The scene felt like something I'd seen before.

"Whatever you've got, take it out on me! Don't make things hard for them!"

I thought of him in tears, and it suddenly struck me as funny.

"Marcus, I'll let you go. You let me go too."

He froze, unable to believe what he'd heard.

"What did you say?"

"I said, we're getting divorced."

I looked at him, my eyes full of disappointment.

Marcus shook his head and laughed.

"You're still half-asleep. That's not what you said before."

Once the words were out, something seemed to occur to him, and he asked me carefully.

"What did you see?"

I had no patience for going in circles with him.

"She already told me. Marcus, if you had the guts to do it, have the guts to own it. You don't want to take responsibility for them?"

"How could I not!"

He rushed to defend himself, and I gave a bitter smile.

"Fine."

When he'd finished, Marcus looked at my pale face, and something in him seemed to soften.

Then the child cried out for his daddy, and Marcus crouched down on instinct to soothe him.

"Don't cry. Daddy's here."

The gesture was as practiced as if he'd done it ten thousand times.

I could only turn my face away. After a moment the crying stopped, and I helped the two of them up.

I let out a sigh.

"As long as you don't make things hard for them, I'll do whatever you say."

His tone was as if the divorce I'd mentioned hadn't registered with him at all.

As if I were just throwing an ordinary tantrum, the kind a little sweet talk could fix.

I said nothing. My chest felt tight.

He looked at me, his face slowly going cold, and pulled the two of them closer against him.

"Our business stays away from the child. The child is innocent. No matter what happens later, you are not to lay a hand on him. That's my line."

The words felt like something I'd heard before.

Back when we married, he'd said the same thing to me.

Said that was his line.

But now the illegitimate son was his line, the mistress was his line, and I had long since been flung out past the horizon.

"You think I'm going to shove him, pinch him, is that it?"

The Marcus from ten years on said nothing, just stood there with a cold face, watching me.

An understanding between adults lives in what goes unspoken.

Ten years, and he still didn't believe me.

"Fine. Get out."

Maybe I was simply too disappointed. I felt calm, and I didn't want to say another word.

Marcus didn't care.

To him, after all, I only begged at the very last moment. Before that, I had loved him more than I loved myself.

He shielded the two of them out the door without sparing me a single glance.

My phone lit up.

"I've set them up somewhere else. They won't come back to see you. Everything you asked me to do, I can do it."

"Sweetheart, she and I really were an accident. I never expected it either. By the time I found out, she'd already gone and had the child in secret. I'm the one who wronged you, but don't be so petty about it. You're still Mrs. Fox, and nothing can change that."

It was almost as if he were saying: last life she was Mrs. Fox, this life it's you.

See? Fair to you, isn't it.

I didn't reply. I just blocked him and deleted him.

When a person reaches the very bottom of disappointment, they don't want a single thread still tying them to the other person.

My mother sent me a message.

"I'm back in the country. I've brought the lawyers with me. Wait for me."

I felt a little steadier. The company lawyers were people I could trust.

The next day, I was shaken awake.

"Where did you take Neddie? I knew you'd never change!"

My head was spinning. When my eyes focused, I saw Marcus's face.

There was a thread of gray at his temples, and his eyes were bloodshot.

He clamped a hand around my throat. The grip wasn't hard, but it was deeply humiliating.

"Back then you pushed Neddie down the stairs and broke his leg. This time you hired someone to kidnap him. Sophie, what is your heart even made of? How can you be this vicious?"

As he spoke, Marcus's tears dropped onto my face.

"I never should have expected anything from you. I should have left you at Southridge for the rest of your life and never gone soft enough to look at you even once!"

Right. When he had me locked away, he came to see me in secret, and he'd said it all so tenderly.

I laughed until tears came.

Marcus was so furious his teeth were nearly grinding to dust.

"You still won't repent. Tell me, where is Neddie?"

"I don't know."

His grip suddenly tightened, and in an instant I couldn't breathe.

"Sophie, tell me, and we're even. I won't blame you anymore. I'll let myself off too."

Marcus's eyes were red, as if he were repenting.

Just as I was about to black out.

The door was flung open.

"Marcus Fox!"