“This is extremely rare,” the doctor said. “Especially without fertility treatments. But right now, all four appear healthy.”
I could not speak.
I stared at the screen until the shapes blurred through my tears.
Four babies.
Julian’s children.
My children.
The doctor printed the ultrasound image and handed it to me.
“Congratulations, Ms. Vance,” she said softly. “You are going to have your hands full.”
I walked out of the clinic in a daze.
Outside, I sat on a bench with the ultrasound picture clutched in both hands.
Then I cried.
Not the broken tears I had refused to give Arthur Sterling.
Not the desperate tears of a woman abandoned by her husband.
These tears were different.
Fierce.
Terrified.
Alive.
I was not alone.
I had four reasons to stand up.
Four reasons to survive.
Four reasons to never let the Sterling family touch my children.
They would never sit at the end of a table.
They would never be ignored by people who measured worth in bloodlines and bank accounts.
They would never grow up begging for love from someone too weak to give it.
They were mine.
I pulled out my phone and looked at the photo I had taken of the check before depositing it.