POV: Amelia
I woke before the alarm, and for the first time in longer than I could remember, I didn’t reach for my phone to check what had happened while I slept.
No message. No crisis. Just morning light on the ceiling and the quiet weight of the baby low in my belly.
I lay there for a moment, testing the feeling. Lighter. Not because anything had been fixed. Ethan and I were still what we were careful, unfinished, circling something neither of us had named yet.
But I had stopped waiting to see what the day would do to me. I had decided, instead, what I was going to do with it.
I got up and went straight to the closet, to the box my mother had given back to me. I hadn’t opened it again since that night on the porch.
I did now, sitting cross-legged on the floor in my robe, and went
