1
Five years after my divorce from Rovan, I saw him again.
I was working at a preschool when he, the man who had fought me tooth and nail in court, walked in with a little boy who looked uncannily like me.
He missed his mom, Rovan said, his voice calm and natural, as if no time had passed at all. "I brought him to see you."
I remembered the warning he had given me when we divorced.
With the same calm I had learned to master, I replied, "You've got the wrong person. I'm not his mother."
In the next instant, the boy hiding behind Rovan's legs ran to me, his small voice choked with tears. "Mommy, please don't leave me."

"Don't say that," Rovan murmured, his eyes downcast. "Leo is your son, after all. You'll break his heart."
His tone was gentle, a world away from the cold indifference he'd shown me five years ago. I can still hear his words from that day, a permanent echo in my mind: Clara, from this day forward, the child has nothing to do with you. If you dare to even try and see him, I will call the police and get a restraining order. I'll make sure you never see him again.
And now, here he was, telling me our son missed me.
I looked down at the weeping boy clinging to my leg.
"Does Victoria know you brought him here?" I asked quietly.
Victoria. His former assistant. His new wife. The boy's mother on paper.
The woman for whom Rovan had destroyed our marriage, the woman he had protected while sending me to hell.
Rovan's lips parted, but no words came out. After a moment, a look of stunned surprise crossed his face.
"Clara... you can... you can talk?" He quickly corrected himself. "I mean, you can speak in full sentences?"
I've had a severe speech impediment since I was a child. Words would get stuck in my throat, and it could take me ages to form a single coherent sentence. Many people just called me 'the stutterer.'
To communicate with me, Rovan had bought me a special journal. For the urgent things, write them down, he'd said. For everything else, I have all the patience in the world. Just take your time and tell me.
But later, when he confessed that he'd fallen for another woman and wanted a divorce, I had tried to ask him why. I got one word out before he cut me off, his face a mask of irritation.
"Clara, you might as well be mute. Do you have any idea how exhausting it is to come home after a long day and have to summon the patience to listen to you struggle?"
"You want to know why I love Victoria?" he'd continued, his voice dripping with cruelty. "Because it's easy with her. I talk, she responds. She understands my stress, she knows how to help me. And what about you?"
He'd completely forgotten his own words from years before: Clara, no matter what, you will always be the one and only Clara to me. He knew my speech was my deepest insecurity, the source of all my shame. And he had used it as a weapon to gut me for another woman.
I didn't answer his question now. I gently pried the little boy's hands from my leg.
"Take him home, Rovan," I said. "And don't come back."
Without another glance, I turned and walked toward my office.
Behind me, I heard Leo's desperate cry, tears flooding his big, watery eyes. "Mommy, don't go! I want my mommy!"
I faltered for a half-step, but I didn't stop.
When I entered my office, my best friend, Maya, looked up from the teaching materials she was organizing.
"Clara, I heard someone was looking for... hey, why are you crying?"
I lifted a hand to my cheek. It came away wet.
Before Rovan and the boy had shown up, I thought I was over it. I thought that if I ever ran into them, I could smile like a polite stranger and say, "Do you remember me? I used to hold you when you were a baby."
But it turned out I wasn't over it at all.
I pressed my lips together, forcing down the wave of emotion that threatened to overwhelm me. "It was Rovan," I whispered, my voice trembling. "He brought the boy."
"What?" The name, unspoken for so long, ignited a fire in Maya. "That bastard! What is he doing here? Hasn't he hurt you enough? Where is he? I'm going to kill him!"
She yanked open her desk drawer, pulled out a fruit knife, and started for the door. Then she froze, a new panic on her face. "Wait, they didn't bring the police, did they? This doesn't count as you seeking him out, right? It won't cause any trouble?"
The day after the divorce was finalized, our nanny had called me. She said Rovan and Victoria were out celebrating their anniversary, and our son had a high fever. The nanny had a family emergency and couldn't stay. She asked if I could come.
The moment I heard "high fever," I panicked. I rushed over, took my son, and went straight to the hospital.