It hadn’t been until two days later that the bleeding started. No one but Carter had known Blaire was pregnant, and they had planned to elope before Christmas. Blaire had desperately wanted to confide in Kate when she found out, but Carter had begged her not to say anything until they were married, for fear word might reach his family if the news got out. His mother would have eventually accepted Blaire, especially when she gave her a grandchild.

When the bleeding got worse, she’d called Carter, and he’d taken her to a clinic in Philadelphia, somewhere they knew no one would see them. A kindly doctor told her that she was hemorrhaging. The accident had caused a miscarriage. She’d lost their baby and gone back to school, no one the wiser. Then he’d called her and broken it off. Maybe if she’d called the clinic when the fever started and gotten antibiotics, things would have been different. Instead, ten years later, she sat in a Manhattan fertility clinic while a doctor told her that the ensuing infection had scarred her uterus and closed both fallopian tubes. There was no way she could conceive or carry a child.

She and Daniel “tried” for three more years before he began pestering her to adopt. The last thing she wanted was to take care of someone else’s child. But he was relentless, finally giving her an ultimatum: either say goodbye to Daniel and the life they had built together, or find a way to start a family. He couldn’t leave her, take away her livelihood, take his wonderful family away from her.

Blaire was finished being left. Shaina had left her. Her father had chosen Enid over her. Carter had left her. And Kate, her best friend, her actual sister, had left her for Simon, replaced her with Selby, and Lily had been forced to take Kate’s side. Because of Kate, she’d lost Lily forever, and she’d lost any chance of having a family of her own. And now, Kate didn’t even seem to care that they were sisters. That Annabelle was her niece. Kate had just cut her out of her life—until Lily died. She’d thrown their bond away because of a stupid little fight.