The drive back to the cabin was a blur of silence and dread. The small, white report, the cold, clinical confirmation of a life starting inside me, was clutched in my hand. It was proof that even in my furious flight, I had not truly escaped Luther. I had brought a piece of him with me, a vulnerable, dangerous, tiny passenger I was now responsible for.
We arrived just before the first hints of pre-dawn gray kissed the snow. The cabin, which had felt like a suffocating tomb earlier in the night, now felt impossibly warm and safe, a bubble of manufactured denial. Levi moved with the quiet efficiency of a medic on duty. She immediately handed me the pill the doctor had prescribed to prevent further nausea, a tiny, white anchor against the rolling sickness, and a glass of filtered water.
