I had exactly four hours to turn my apartment into something that looked like stability, and I spent most of them scrubbing counters that were already clean, trying not to think too hard about what it meant that I was suddenly terrified of my own home not looking like enough.
Marcus showed up an hour before Diane Whitfield was due, carrying a bag of groceries like somehow fresh fruit on the counter might matter to a court evaluator assessing whether I was fit to raise our child.
"You didn't have to do this," I said, letting him in anyway.
"I know." He set the bag down and looked around the small apartment, the same one he'd never once visited during our marriage, the one that held every piece of the life I'd built entirely without him. "I wanted to be here. For this part especially."
D
