All morning, Lila felt sick to her stomach, and she didn’t know why until she turned on her television.
Her shriek could be heard throughout her nine-bedroom mansion and probably down the street.
“An anonymous source sold her story to TMZ with what she says is proof that Lila Fowler, True Housewives star, faked her pregnancy and her miscarriage on the popular reality show.” The news anchor on E! swept back her long blond hair and delivered the devastating news with just the hint of a smile.
Lila felt her bedroom spin. Suddenly, she felt dizzy. Her hairstylist and makeup artist sat frozen next to her, their eyes glued to the TV set. Lila slunk out of her chair and ran to the bathroom, where she locked the door behind her.
Think, she told herself in a panic. Think.
Downstairs, the True Housewives cameramen were setting up in her kitchen. She heard the hustle and bustle of giant light fixtures and sound booms moving in and out.
Think of something! She silently screamed at herself. She glanced up at her reflection in the mirror, a pale, wan version of her face glaring back. She looked a little green, and she felt worse. She had that panicky, clammy feeling that she hated so much. Being caught red-handed made her want to throw up. Her heart pounded in her rib cage. When Ken found out…She felt sick just thinking about it. But maybe she could tell him it was all a mistake! He’s not a neurosurgeon, he’s a quarterback, Lila told herself. You can fool him. He’ll believe anything you say.
In the mirror, her dark, normally shrewd eyes looked back at her with fear in them. Even she couldn’t convince herself she’d get off that easily.
Maybe she could tell the cameras to go. The idea of facing them made the room spin. She already knew she wouldn’t be able to convince the producers to leave. They were like sharks, and they’d smell blood in the water.
God, what a mess! Lila dropped her head in her hands.
“Lila!”
She heard Ken’s roar right before she heard the front door slam so hard it rattled the windows. Fear shook her. She wanted to hide in the bathroom forever, but she also knew she had to face him. There was still hope she could turn this all around. Wasn’t there?
“Deny everything,” Lila told her reflection in the mirror. She nodded at herself, but the pale face with too much makeup blinked back at her, unconvinced.
“Lila! Get down here or I swear to God…” Ken shouted up the staircase. TV cameramen scrambled to get mobile cameras on their shoulders for the impromptu shot. Two cameras hovered around Ken, but he was too furious even to notice.
Lila appeared on the stairs looking pale, but she held her chin high. Haughty had always been her best look.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, playing dumb.
“You damn well know what’s wrong!” Ken held up a printout of the TMZ report. “You played me again!”
“Ken…it’s not true. It’s just not true! You can’t believe TMZ over me!”
Lila flew down the stairs and got close enough to Ken to try to hug him. He shrugged her away. The cameras around them pivoted and turned, but Lila didn’t even care that they were there. For once, she forgot completely about the story she was trying to play, about the angles of her face that looked best on television. She just desperately wanted Ken to understand he had to stay with her. He was the only one who would!
“Please, baby…”
“Don’t ‘baby’ me!” He ground out the words between clenched teeth. His face turned beet red splotched with white. He stomped right up to Lila and grabbed her arm—hard. “You are a liar, Lila.”
“I’m not. You can’t believe TMZ!”
“If you’re not lying, then prove it. Let’s call Enid. She can confirm your pregnancy, right? And the miscarriage.”
When Lila hesitated, Ken pulled out his cell phone. Lila saw Enid Rollins’s office number flash on the face of it.
Oh, God. Her stomach roiled in protest; she felt bile in her throat. She knew the truth: There was no pregnancy test. She’d never gone to her OB-GYN for anything other than a routine exam.
“What? Speechless?” Ken hit the “call” button. He put it on speaker, and Lila heard the phone ringing.
“Hello, Dr. Rollins’s office,” a woman’s chirpy voice answered.
Ken shoved the phone in Lila’s face, but she put up her hands, unable to hide the guilty panic in her eyes.
Ken ended the call.
“I knew it,” he said, disgust on his face, and something more heartbreaking—pain.
“Ken—please. I can explain.” She’d had her reasons for doing it. She had to make him understand that all she ever wanted was to be loved. Why was that so wrong?
“No, Lila. I know you think I’m stupid. But I’m not. Everyone always warned me to stay away from you, that you were a first-class bitch. I always told them they were wrong about you. But you know what? They were right!”
His words rained down on Lila’s head like oversized chunks of hard, icy hail. Ken let her arm go as a look of disgust passed across his face.
“I want you to look at me when I say this. I’m going to tell you this one time, in front of the whole world, Lila. Do not call me. Do not even look at me. I don’t want to hear about you. I don’t ever want to see you again, do you hear me? I am going to file for divorce, and this time I mean to see it through.”
A sob broke from her throat and tears streamed down Lila’s cheeks before she could stop them. She didn’t even have to pretend, like she usually did. These were real tears—she was slobbering and blubbering in a way that would look terrible on camera. She knew it but she couldn’t stop. Even the thought of Ashley Morgan triumphantly watching this show when it aired didn’t stop the flow.
“Ken, please don’t! Please don’t do this!” She swiped furiously at her nose with her sleeve, but it was no good. She couldn’t control herself—tears and snot went everywhere.
Ken shook his head, a horrible sadness clouding his features.
“Do you know how cruel it is? What you’ve done?” His voice sounded small as he shook his head, his heartbreak heavy in the room. “I loved that baby. He was real to me. When I found out we were going to start a family, I was on top of the world, Lila. I really couldn’t have been happier.”
“Ken…” Lila felt an ache in her chest. His pain was so real, so heartfelt. He really had loved that baby. She realized in that moment how she had completely miscalculated, how terrible her mistake was. “Ken, we could try for a real baby. We could try. We can be a family!”
Ken’s head snapped up and his eyes turned cold. “Get away from me,” he growled, shrugging off her touch. “You think you can fake a pregnancy and then make it all okay? Are you insane?”
“Let me try. I’ll do anything.”
“No.” Ken shook his head. “This is actually a blessing, Lila, because now I see that I don’t want you. You’re not worth having. Not now. Not ever. You’re pathetic, Lila, a sad scheming bitch, and God help anybody who thinks you’re worth a damn. They’ll soon know all you have is on the outside—money, nice things, whatever—but inside, Lila, at your core, you’re not worth a goddamn cent.”
With that, Ken turned and stormed off, slamming the door behind him. The sobs racked Lila, and all she could think was that now the whole world knew what she had always feared: She wasn’t worth loving.
In mid-sob, her whole body convulsed, her stomach rebelled, and then it was all over. She only just made it to a potted plant before she retched, throwing up what was left of her breakfast.
She swiped at her mouth and ran up the stairs to her bedroom, mortified and heartbroken. She wasn’t ever going to come out; she would stay there long after the last camera had left. She retched two more times, hanging over the toilet, wondering what was wrong as she cried and cried and cried. She was heartbroken, yes, but it was more than that. Something was wrong with her body. It didn’t just act like this.
She felt like a woman who’d lost control of everything. Like her hormones had taken over and…
Hormones.
Crying.
Sickness.
Oh, God.
Quickly, Lila did a calculation. Oh, no, no, no. She’d been so busy faking a pregnancy she hadn’t even bothered to notice that she’d missed her last period. She was more than a month late.
Her mind instantly went back to all those nights of celebratory sex, all those times Ken couldn’t keep his hands off her. And the fact that with all the cameras around and everything, maybe she’d missed a pill or two. Or three. She hadn’t even bothered to worry about it at the time. She had other things on her mind. But now…Oh, God, now…!
Lila scrambled on her knees to the cabinet next to the sink. She threw it open and tossed out boxes of Q-tips and Kleenex and reached far, far into the back. She had a pregnancy test back there, she knew, one of a two-pack she’d used the year before when she’d been a couple of days late. It had turned up negative at the time. She grabbed the box and tore open what was left of the package. Lila scrambled to take the test and then waited the painstaking three minutes.
One line means I’m not pregnant, and two blue lines means I am.
One line. Please, God, I will do anything. Just let there be one line!
Lila stared at the stick, watching as the blue line materialized.
Yes! One line!
Relief flooded through her. Food poisoning then. Must be, right?
But, no. As she watched, horrified, the second line came into view. She blinked, speechless, as she stared at the two unmistakably clear blue lines.
This time, there wasn’t anything fake about it. No matter how long she stared at the stick, the result never changed: Lila Fowler, who had just faked a miscarriage, was eight weeks pregnant.