I sat on the curb with rain pounding down like the sky itself wanted to bury me. Lily—three days old, barely the size of my forearm—was pressed against my chest, wrapped in my shirt while everything I owned soaked through inside three garbage bags at my feet. Cars kept passing, headlights slicing through the storm, windshield wipers smearing past me like I was nothing but a shadow on the sidewalk.
I counted them. Thirty-seven cars in the first hour. Not one stopped. Not one rolled a window down. They stared, then drove away, leaving me and my newborn alone in the cold.
Three days earlier, I’d been a wife with a home, a nursery half-painted, and a future. Now, I had forty-seven dollars, a C-section incision burning under my clothes, and a baby who’d done nothing but enter the world unwanted by the man who helped create her.
Michael hadn’t always been cruel. Or maybe I’d been too in love to see it. When I told him I was pregnant, I expected fear mixed with excitement. Instead, he stared at the test like it was a verdict against him.
“Get rid of it.”
Just like that. No discussion. No hesitation.
Continue reading next page…