The morning of our divorce, my husband walked in with his mistress on his arm—both dressed like they’d already claimed the life they thought they stole from me.

You close your eyes and smile without warmth. Even now. Even after court. Even after the documents. He still reaches for the oldest tool in the box.

“No,” you say. “I’m being documented.”

You hang up.

The baby comes twelve days later.

Not on schedule. Not during daylight. Not in the dramatic, movie-perfect way first births are always imagined. Your water breaks at 2:14 in the morning while you are standing in the kitchen in one of Damian’s old T-shirts making toast because pregnancy hunger is a lunatic. One second you are waiting for the bread to brown. The next, warm fluid runs down your legs and you freeze in place.

Your mother, sleeping in the guest room ever since the hearing, is up before you finish calling her name.

The hospital is bright and too cold and buzzing with the strange half-calm chaos of labor wards at night. Nurses move in purposeful loops. Monitors beep. Questions come and go. Your contractions build with ruthless efficiency, dragging you down into your own body until the world narrows to breath and grip and ache.

Damian arrives just after dawn.