TOO LATE, MY LOVE

The Empty Nursery

In the dark of night, Aitana stands alone in the bathroom.

Hot water drums against the tiles, steam billowing until the mirrors are fogged and the edges of the room blur. She lets the heat chase away the chills that have settled deep in her bones—the same chills that have lived inside her since the hospital, since the word cancer dropped into her life like a bomb. She scrubs her skin until it turns pink, but the coldness stays, wrapped tight around her heart.

When she finally steps out, she wraps a towel around her trembling body and walks barefoot down the hall. Water drips from her hair onto the marble floor, leaving a trail like a line of tears. She passes the master bedroom, passes Pedri’s closed study, and stops before a door at the end of the corridor—a door Pedri never opens, a room he pretends does not exist.

She pushes it open.

A warmly furnished children’s room lies before her. Soft yellow light spills from a lamp shaped like a crescent moon. The walls are painted a gentle cream. A white crib stands against the far wall, empty. A mobile of felt stars hangs motionless above it. On a low shelf, a music box sits in silence, its little brass key waiting. The air smells faintly of lavender, a remnant of the baby lotion she bought years ago and never used.

Aitana walks to the music box. Her fingers, still trembling from the cold or something else entirely, press the button lightly. A mellow lullaby fills the room, note by note. The tinny melody wraps around her like a memory she cannot escape, sweet and suffocating all at once.

This room was meant for a child. Her child. The baby she lost at five months, on a rainy November night while Pedri was away—on a business trip, he said. She had woken to a sharp pain in her belly. She had called his number, once, twice, three times, but he never answered. Bleeding and terrified, she crawled to the phone and dialed 911. By the time the paramedics arrived, the tiny heartbeat was already gone.

She never saw Pedri cry. When he came home the next day, his face was a mask of stone. He did not hold her. He did not weep. He looked at her with something colder than grief—something that bordered on accusation, as if losing the baby were her fault. He never spoke of the child again. He sealed that pain behind his ribs and let it harden into another brick in the wall between them.

Now, Aitana sinks onto the soft rug beside the crib. She rests her forehead against the wooden bars and weeps. Not loud, heaving sobs—just a quiet, steady stream of tears that soaks the rug and leaves salt tracks on her cheeks. The lullaby plays on, indifferent, gentle, endless.

God must have decided to take her life, she thinks, because she failed to save her baby’s.

The thought is not new. It has lived in her for years, a dark whisper at the back of her mind. Now that whisper has a diagnosis to back it up. She imagines a cosmic scale—her life for the baby’s. Balance restored. The idea brings a strange, hollow comfort.

Outside the window, Manhattan glitters in the dark. Inside the yellow-lit nursery, a woman who was almost a mother slowly comes apart piece by piece. No one knows. No one calls. No one comes.

Somewhere across town, Pedri is probably laughing with Alessia, his arm draped over the back of a sofa, his voice warm and easy. He might be reading a bedtime story to her child, his head bent close, his rare smile on display. Aitana pictures that smile—a smile she has not seen directed at her in years—and the image cuts deeper than any scalpel ever could.

She thinks about the divorce papers she drafted weeks ago, hidden in the bottom drawer of her study. Blank spaces wait for her signature. She could sign them tonight. She could leave them on the kitchen island and disappear. What is there left to stay for? A husband who hates her? A home that feels like a mausoleum? A body that is already turning against itself?

The lullaby stops. The silence rushes back in, heavier than before.

Aitana does not move. She stays curled on the rug, her hand pressed flat against her empty belly. The crescent moon lamp casts its soft glow over her. She looks almost peaceful, if not for the tears still wet on her face.

Eventually, sleep takes her there on the nursery floor. And in her dreams, a baby laughs—a sound so pure and real that when she wakes, she reaches out, grasping for something that was never there.