Each step heavier than the last.
“Marla?” I said.
She froze.
Her face drained of color.
And in that moment…
I knew.
Before anyone said a word, I knew.
“You,” I whispered.
My voice didn’t sound like mine anymore.
“I never expected this from you.”
The woman next to her stepped forward, her hands shaking.
“I’m Suzanne,” she said quietly. “We need to talk.”
But I wasn’t listening anymore.
Because everything I had lived with for six years…
every night I cried over a child I thought I lost…
every moment I felt something missing and couldn’t explain why…
suddenly had an answer.
And it wasn’t grief.
