Carrying my newborn in my arms, I didn’t expect my grandpa to ask me this: “I gave you a car, right?”

The cold that morning wasn’t the cute, Hallmark kind of winter cold.

It was the kind that turned your eyelashes crunchy and made your lungs feel like they were inhaling broken glass. The kind that made the sidewalk shine like a warning. The kind that took the city—our neat little suburb outside Chicago—and stripped it down to pure survival.

I was outside anyway, because Noah’s formula was almost gone.

That was it. That was the whole reason.

Not a stroll. Not fresh air. Not “getting steps in.” Just the grim math of motherhood: baby eats, baby lives, and the store doesn’t care that your husband is overseas or that your family treats you like a houseguest who overstayed her welcome.

Noah was strapped to my chest in an old carrier I’d bought off Facebook Marketplace, the fabric faded and soft from a thousand other mothers’ panic purchases. His tiny face was tucked against me, wide-eyed and quiet. Too quiet, honestly—the kind of quiet that made me wonder what he’d already learned about tension.

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