The days following Paul's departure were a strange waltz. The solitude, first crushing, gradually became space. Marina grew accustomed to the house's creaks, the crackle of the old radio she left on to fill the silence, the precise route to the grocery store where the baker, named Élise, was starting to recognize her and slip an extra pain au chocolat into her bag with a wink.
The nausea, persistent, marked her mornings. She had made a first appointment with a town doctor, a Dr. Lambert with a paternalistic smile who had examined her with a kindness that had nearly made her cry. Everything was fine. The heart was beating. A little bean on the ultrasound screen, blurry and miraculous. She had kept the photo in her apron pocket, touching it several times a day like a talisman.
It was in th
