I set the phone face down on my knee and feel it thump once with some notification I ignore. My brain is trying to list things in some order. It can’t decide which order to panic in, so it keeps starting new lists. The words repeat anyway. Over. Over. Over.
It’s not like I didn’t know it was possible. I missed a period. I told myself stress could do that. Stress can do a lot of things.
It can make you miss meals and forget to breathe and stare at your ceiling at 3:00 in the morning, cataloging every mistake you’ve ever made. But it doesn’t draw two pink lines in neat little windows. Biology does that.
I take a breath that doesn’t go deep enough and try again. Air fills my chest and stalls halfway. I press my thumb into the bridge of my nose until bright stars pop behind my eyelids.
Stop. Think.
The facts, Elena.
I am pregnant. I am a federal prosecutor. The father is a defendant wearing an ankle monitor my office argued to keep him in. He is also the man I slept with because I wanted him, and because I let go of everything I am supposed to believe in—for one night.
One night.
The couch fabric bites the backs of my thighs through my sweats. I force my shoulders down. My phone vibrates again, and I don’t check it. I’m not answering anyone but the voice in my head, and that voice is not kind.
Not kind at all.
I shouldn’t have gone to the appointment alone. I didn’t have a choice. No friends who aren’t also colleagues. No family within driving distance.
And, importantly, no marshal tail anymore to notice and ask questions I can’t answer.
The protection posture eased two weeks ago: blinds can go up in the daytime, walks are allowed on marked routes with my phone on loud.
“Normal life,” Lawrence told me with that careful and calming tone he uses. And I took all that space and used it to drive out of town to pee on sticks and let a stranger tell me what my own body already knew.
I reach for the glass on the coffee table without looking and bring it halfway to my mouth before I remember. Wine.
I don’t even know why I poured it, to be honest. In defiance? Denial? But I couldn’t bring myself to drink it.
I set it down hard enough that liquid kisses the rim and leaves a circle on the table. I push the glass away like it’s a coiled snake.
My career is over.
I say it in my head because saying it out loud might make it come true even faster.
Conflict of interest isn’t a strong enough phrase for what this is. If anyone finds out, the case—my case—blows up on contact. Brady, Giglio, every rule and standard I ever quoted at someone else in a courtroom comes back like a boomerang and hits me between the eyes.
Best case, I get sidelined and censured and quietly escorted out the back of the building with a banker’s box. Worst case, it’s headlines and hearings and the kind of stain you can’t scrub off, even with ten years of service and a stack of trial wins.
I shouldn’t have allowed myself to be alone with him. I should have called the marshals as soon as I knew Luca was in the room.
I shouldn’t have let him get under my skin. I shouldn’t have wanted him. The list of “shouldn’ts” stretches from my couch to the courthouse and wraps around the building twice.
I swallow. The phone sits on my knee like a weight. My hands are ice cold and stiff.
I pull the throw blanket down over my legs because doing something feels better than doing nothing. The fiber catches on the dry skin of my knuckles. I stare at the far wall and think about my mamma’s recipe tin.
The cards in my mother’s hand. Pasta all’uovo. Torta di mele. The card that says 'cacio e pepe' with three ingredients and one instruction that should be simple, but wasn’t. I wrote “no heat near cheese” on the back, like a student who’s finally learned the trick after failing too many times.
What’s the trick here, Mamma? What’s the note on the back of the card for “You slept with the wrong man and now your life has split into a Before and After”?
The ache to speak to my mother grows so strong it nearly suffocates me. Tears prick my eyes, then just as quickly disappear.
I get up because the energy has to go somewhere, or I’m going to come apart. The plant in the corner needs water, but I ignore it.
I go to my bedroom and pull open the top drawer of my dresser, where I hide the recipe tin like a teenager hides a diary. The metal is cool in my hands. I sit back down on the couch with it in my lap and open the lid.
