One night, I was sitting on the nursery floor folding baby clothes when my phone buzzed. It was Andrew. He sounded overly cheerful.
Too cheerful. He told me he and his friends were coming over to watch a game. He assured me they would stay in the living room, that I wouldn’t even notice them.
Every instinct in me screamed no. I needed rest. I needed calm.
But I was tired of arguing, tired of feeling like the difficult one. So I agreed. The house was filled with noise, laughter, shouting, and clinking bottles.
I retreated to our bedroom, closed the door, and placed a hand over my belly, whispering reassurances to the tiny life inside me. Eventually, exhaustion took over. Sometime later, I felt a hand on my shoulder.
“Wake up,” Andrew whispered. His voice sounded wrong. I opened my eyes to find him standing in the doorway, face tense, eyes glassy.
He paced the room, rubbing his hands together, clearly struggling to speak. He said something his friends had mentioned that night. Something about the timeline.
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