Eight months after the divorce, my phone buzzed with his name. “Come to my wedding,” he said, smug as ever. “She’s preg.nant—unlike you.” I froze, fingers tightening around the hospital sheet.
And I had already decided the truth would not reach her as a wound.
It would reach her as armor.
Three days later, I left the hospital with Lily in my arms and my lawyer’s card in my coat pocket.
The world outside was bright enough to hurt. Winter sunlight flashed off parked cars, cold air biting at my cheeks. My sister Nora was waiting at the curb, her hair twisted into a messy knot, sunglasses hiding eyes that had cried with me through every miscarriage, every insult, every night Adrian came home smelling like Celeste’s perfume and called me paranoid.
When she saw Lily, her face broke open.
“Oh, Mia,” she whispered.
I let her take the car seat while I moved carefully, my body still tender, every step reminding me that I had split myself open to bring my child into the world.
Nora glanced at me. “You don’t have to go.”
“Yes,” I said.
“Mia.”
“I’m going.”
“To his wedding? After what he said?”
I looked down at Lily. She was asleep again, indifferent to the cold, indifferent to revenge.
“Especially after what he said.”
Nora shut the car door harder than necessary. “Then I’m coming.”
“No.”
Her head snapped toward me. “Excuse me?”
“I need you with Lily.”
“You’re not taking the baby?”
“I am.”
Nora stared. “You just said—”
“I’m taking Lily into the venue. I’m not taking her into the mess.”
