Co się stało, gdy przestałaś ukrywać ciążę przed rodziną?… Po raz pierwszy zdałam sobie sprawę, że moja rodzina może zrobić wszystko dla mojej siostry, gdy miałam dwanaście lat i krwawiłam przez białe szorty podczas grilla z okazji Czwartego Lipca…

I swallowed. “They’re going to say I made it worse.”

He looked at me like he was trying to hand me something I’d never been allowed to hold.

“Listen to me,” he said. “You didn’t cause anything. You stopped participating in a lie. That’s all.”

My eyes stung.

Because deep down, I knew he was right.

But my nervous system still flinched like Aubrey’s feelings were a loaded weapon in the room.

An hour later, Ricardo called.

His name on my screen made my stomach drop. Not because I was mad at him—because he was the only one who’d told me the truth—but because anything connected to Aubrey felt radioactive now.

I answered anyway.

“Hey,” I said, voice careful.

Ricardo exhaled, tired. “She’s on a seventy-two-hour hold,” he said. “They’re evaluating her. Your parents are… losing it.”

Of course they were.

My parents didn’t know how to function unless they were containing Aubrey.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

The question almost broke me because it was so simple and so rare—someone asking me without it being a setup.

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I’m scared. And I’m angry. And I feel guilty even though I know I shouldn’t.”

Ricardo made a small sound like agreement. “That’s exactly how it’s designed to feel.”

I swallowed. “What happens now?”

“I don’t know,” he said honestly. “But I’m done covering. If the police follow up about the punch threat, I’m telling them everything. And… I’m moving out. I can’t keep living inside this.”

My throat tightened. “Ricardo—”

“I know,” he cut in, voice cracking. “It’s her. I married her. I thought love meant staying. But love doesn’t mean lying to everyone so your wife can cosplay a pregnancy and terrorize the family.”

He paused.

“She said something in the ambulance,” he added quietly. “She kept screaming it was your fault. She believes it. Or she wants to believe it.”

I felt cold.

“Thank you for calling,” I said.

Ricardo sighed. “I’m sorry it took me this long.”

After we hung up, Evan didn’t ask what he said. He just pulled me into his arms and held me like he could physically block my family’s chaos from reaching the baby.

Then he said, “We’re taking action today.”

Action started with my doctor.

I’d already scheduled a check, but after the baby shower disaster, I didn’t want “probably fine.” I wanted certainty.

At the clinic, the nurse wrapped the blood pressure cuff around my arm and watched the numbers flash.

Her eyebrows lifted slightly.

“Little high,” she said gently.

Not emergency-high. But enough to make my pulse spike.

The doctor came in with that calm, competent face doctors wear when your life feels like it’s on fire and they’re trying to be the steady object in the room.

“Tell me what happened,” she said.

I gave her the short version. The forced secrecy. The fake pregnancy. The public meltdown. Police. The poisoning threat.

She didn’t look shocked. She looked… grimly unsurprised.

“I’m glad you came in,” she said. “Baby looks great.”

When she turned on the ultrasound and that heartbeat filled the room—strong, rhythmic, steady—I started crying so hard my chest hurt.

Evan squeezed my hand.

The doctor let me have the moment, then said quietly, “Now we protect you.”

She recommended therapy and stress reduction, yes. But she also said something practical that landed like permission:

“Limit contact with the people triggering your stress. Pregnancy isn’t the time to prove you can tolerate dysfunction.”

In the car afterward, Evan looked at me and said, “Did you hear her? Doctor’s orders: no more Aubrey.”

I managed a shaky laugh. “I think she meant it medically.”

“I’m taking it spiritually too,” he said.

That afternoon, we sat in Marsha Lane’s office again—our attorney—while she scanned the police report we’d requested through a records portal.

“It’s documented,” Marsha said, tapping the pages. “Threat of poisoning. Destruction of property. Disorderly conduct. Crisis hold. That’s enough to justify a restraining order.”

My throat tightened. “But she didn’t actually poison anything.”

Marsha’s eyes sharpened. “She threatened it during an active outburst. That matters. And the fake pregnancy belly falling off? That matters. It corroborates deception.”

Evan slid Ricardo’s screenshots across the desk—those texts where Aubrey talked about timing a fake miscarriage after my announcement to blame me.

Marsha read them once, then twice, then exhaled through her nose.

“Okay,” she said. “This is no longer a family disagreement. This is harassment with premeditation.”

I stared at the papers and felt a strange dissociation, like I was reading about someone else’s life.

Marsha looked at me. “I need you to understand something. Restraining orders aren’t punishment. They’re boundaries with legal enforcement.”

I swallowed. “My mom will lose her mind.”

Marsha’s expression didn’t change. “Your mother is not the patient we’re treating. Your baby is.”

That sentence cut clean through my guilt like a blade.

I nodded. “File it.”

Marsha didn’t celebrate. She just clicked her pen and started moving.

Two days later, Aubrey was released from the hold.

The hospital social worker called to inform me, like she was reading off a checklist.

“She has outpatient referrals,” the woman said. “We encouraged follow-up. We cannot force compliance. Do you feel safe?”

I looked at Evan, who was standing in the doorway listening.

“No,” I said truthfully. “Not fully.”

The social worker didn’t argue. “Would you like resources for protective orders?”

“I already have an attorney,” I said.

“Good,” she replied, voice soft. “I’m glad you’re taking precautions.”

After I hung up, my phone rang again immediately.

Dad.