Every evening, someone placed food in front of me without asking what I had accomplished to deserve it.
The ordinary kindness unsettled me.
I had forgotten that care could arrive without an invoice attached.
At my first appointment in San Diego, I heard the baby’s heartbeat.
It was fast and steady.
I cried then.
Not because Thomas was absent.
Because the sound made the future real.
There was someone inside me who would learn love from what I accepted.
I could not teach that child that loyalty meant disappearing.
Three weeks later, the attorneys scheduled mediation.
Thomas appeared by video from Seattle.
Brenda sat beside him until his lawyer asked her to leave the room.
Even through the screen, I could see her irritation.
She wore a cream blazer and kept whispering into Thomas’s ear.
Amanda noticed.
“Is Ms.
Price a party to this divorce?” she asked.
Thomas’s attorney said no.
