Then she learned he’d died in the arms of his new love. Heart attack.

Gone, gone…gone.

She was still processing. Still getting used to the fact that he’d left her for another woman. Left her…when she’d still believed that maybe, just maybe, there would be that chance for them. That chance to start a family. Have a child. A child of their own. A child of her own…

The window of Pink, Blue, and You, a combined baby and maternity store, materialized in front of her. She’d stopped into it earlier and picked out a gift for a pregnant coworker. It was a fine torture to be inside. She wanted a baby. She’d always wanted a baby. Her insides twisted with the memory that she’d lost an unborn baby a long, long time ago.

Yet, at times like this, the pain returned, as fresh and raw as when she’d miscarried.

Tears hovered behind her eyes. But she wasn’t going to break down, for God’s sake. Not now. She’d grieved far too long as it was. She held the stupid tears at bay, turning her face away from the display of pastel pinks and blues and lemony yellows. Was that why she’d married Ben? To have a baby? To replace the one who’d been taken from her?

Becca told herself to get over it. She’d asked herself the same question countless times, had toiled and fretted over the answer. But it was all moot now. Ben was gone. And he’d left his twenty-two-year-old new lover pregnant, something he’d never wanted with Becca.

“I don’t want children,” he’d said. “You knew it when you married me.”

Had she? She didn’t remember that.

“It’s just you and me, Beck. You and me.”

Maybe she had married him to have a child. Correction. To replace a child. Maybe she’d made up the “I love you” parts. Maybe she’d just wanted the whole thing to be so much prettier than it was.