The last thing I felt before the darkness took me was my son kicking once, hard, as if he were trying to pull me back from the edge. The last thing I saw was my husband closing the door.
An hour earlier, I had been in an exam room, crying at the fuzzy black-and-white image of our baby’s face.
“He’s perfect,” the technician had said.
Perfect.
Then I came home and found my life stuffed into black garbage bags across the front lawn.
My winter coat. My nursing pillow. My mother’s quilt. My framed law school diploma lying face-down in the grass like a dead thing.
Evan stood in the doorway with his sister, Marla, beside him. Marla’s eyes were red from divorce and sharp with satisfaction.
“What is this?” I asked.
Evan didn’t even look ashamed.
“Marla needs the master bedroom more than you do.”
I stared at him, my hands spread over my swollen stomach.
“I’m thirty-eight weeks pregnant.”
“And dramatic,” Marla said.
Evan folded his arms. “You can sleep in the basement.”
For a second, the world went silent.
“This is my home,” I said.
“Our home,” he corrected.
That was his first mistake.
I stepped toward the door. “Move.”
Marla smiled. “Careful, Claire. Stress is bad for the baby.”
I tried to push past them.
Her foot slid out.
I remember the sky spinning. The railing flashing past. My body hitting the steps, then the concrete path below. Pain exploded through my belly, white and merciless.
“Evan,” I gasped.
He looked down at me.
Marla whispered, “Shut the door.”
And he did.
When I woke, I was under hospital lights.
My father stood beside the bed in his old judge’s suit, his face gray with rage. My best friend Nadia, a criminal defense attorney, held my hand.
“The baby?” I croaked.
Nadia squeezed my fingers. “Stable. You both are.”
I started to cry then, quietly, carefully, because even grief hurt.
My father leaned close.
