~Six Years Ago~
(Rebecca's POV)
I sit on the edge of a shared tub in the communal bathroom and stare at two pink lines on a plastic stick.
No one to call. No one to tell. Just me, the lines, the tile.
The fluorescent tube above the mirror flickers. It’s been doing that since I moved in — a low, buzzing stutter everyone steps around. Nobody here reports anything. We live with the broken parts. The light skims the wet edge of the test and the pink deepens for a beat, then washes out again.
Two lines.
I set the stick on my knee. My hands are dry. My mouth isn’t. I swallow twice. Sour, metallic. My body knows before my brain catches up.
It’s been weeks since the Hartwell incident. I’ve been working — building, designing, the work that is my life — while my body does something else witho
