She turned into a random park, pulling into the empty lot near the baseball fields. She put the car in park. She turned off the engine.
The silence of the car rushed in.
A baby.
He gave her a baby.
The dam broke.
It didn't start as a cry; it started as a convulsion. Sarah folded over the steering wheel, gasping for air as if she had been held underwater.
Then the sound came—a raw, guttural wail that shook her entire body. She screamed until her throat tasted like blood. She pounded the steering wheel with her fists until her hands ached.
She cried for the nursery she would never paint. She cried for the names she would never use. She cried because he was going to be a father, but not with her. He was going to love a child that was half-Emily.
She cried because she realized, with devastating clarity, that she was the only one who had truly lost everything. They had each other. They had a future.
She had a deed to a house that was full of ghosts.
Chapter Eleven
Harrison
The beige apartment walls were closing in. That was the only way Harrison could describe the last four months. They weren't just walls; they were a vice, slowly tightening, crushing the air out of his lungs.
It hadn't started that way. Or at least, he hadn't noticed it at first.
In the beginning—two weeks after he signed the papers, two weeks after he signed his life away—there was the anesthesia. The sex.
It was the only time his brain shut off. It was the only time the crushing guilt of the baby, the divorce, and the shame didn't scream at him.
He remembered a Tuesday night, barely fourteen days into his exile. They were in the living room. The TV was blaring some game show, casting a flickering blue light over the cheap, scratchy carpet.
Emily had walked out of the bathroom wearing nothing but one of his dress shirts, open at the front. She knew he was hurting, and she knew the cure. She didn't say a word. She just pushed him off the sofa onto the floor.
He went willingly. He always did.
She straddled him, her skin hot, her eyes wild with that possessive gleam she always had. "Forget them," she had whispered, grinding down on him. "Just feel this."
And he did. He grabbed her hips, bruising the skin,driving into her with a desperation that bordered on violence. It wasn't lovemaking. It was an exorcism. He slammed into her, harder and harder, the friction burning, the carpet seeking to scrub the skin off his back.
"Yes," Emily had moaned, tossing her head back, her hands tangled in his hair. "Harder, Harrison. Make me forget."
He fucked her until his legs shook, until the sweat dripped into his eyes, blinding him. For those ten minutes, on that dirty floor, he wasn't a failure. He was just a body. A machine of sensation.
But the anesthesia always wore off. And the hangover was getting worse.
Month Three: The Career Suicide
The logistics spreadsheet on his monitor hadn't changed in three days. Harrison stared at the cursor blinking in cell G42. Blink. Blink. Blink.
He smelled like peppermint gum and stale bourbon. He had started adding a "splash" to his morning coffee. Then a splash at lunch. Now, a flask in his desk drawer.
"Harrison?"
He looked up. His boss, David, was standing at the door. He looked concerned, which irritated Harrison. He didn't want concern. He wanted punishment.
"Can we chat?"
