Chapter 5 - Leaving the Past Behind
I was hospitalized for five days.
Alex came every day. Soup. Fruit. Baby clothes. Ginger snaps from the bakery I loved during my first trimester. He left them with nurses and sat in the hallway clutching the ring.
I saw him once through the glass when they wheeled me back from a test.
He looked like a man waiting outside his own sentencing.
I felt pain when I saw him.
I will not pretend otherwise.
I had loved him. I loved the way he laughed when I mispronounced fire equipment terms. The way he carried groceries up three flights when our elevator at home broke. The way he once drove forty minutes for lemon ice when morning sickness turned me into someone who cried over smells.
But love is not a life raft if the person holding it keeps tossing it to someone else.
On discharge day, Sarah came to pick me up.
Alex appeared in the parking garage with ginger snaps in a brown paper bag.
He had finally remembered.
Too late.
“Lucy,” he said. “Come home. Or I’ll leave the house. You can stay there. It’s close to the hospital.”
“I’ve rented an apartment.”
“You rented—” Panic flashed in his eyes. “You’re pregnant. You shouldn’t be moving. Give me the address.”
“No.”
“I just want to take care of you.”
“That sounds ridiculous now, doesn’t it?”
He flinched.
“Please. If I follow your rules, if I keep Valerie away, if I make my mother apologize, would you consider not divorcing me?”
“No.”
The word surprised even me with how easily it came out.
His eyes filled.
“Why?”
I looked at the bag.
“Because I don’t have a taste for ginger snaps anymore.”
He lowered his head.
Sarah opened the car door for me.
Before I got in, Alex held out the ring.
“Take it. Hold on to it until you’re calmer.”
Sarah answered before I could.
“Mr. Davis, Miss Miller returned that ring voluntarily. There is no ‘holding on’ to it. Do whatever you want with it, but don’t try to chain her with evidence of a marriage she is leaving.”
I got in.
We drove away.
I did not look back.
The apartment I rented was small, bright, and two blocks from the hospital. Sarah taped my medication schedule to the refrigerator. A home aide named Martha came daily. She was fifty-eight, efficient, and had no interest in romantic tragedy.
“Your job is keeping yourself and that baby alive,” she said on the first morning. “Everything else can get in line.”
That became my household policy.
Brenda and Valerie tried to visit once.
They pounded on my door until Martha threatened to call building security. I opened the Ring camera app and spoke through the intercom.
“Leave.”
Brenda shouted that no decent woman raised a Davis grandchild in a rental.
Valerie cried that I hated her.
I said, “Valerie, if you keep performing at my door, I will print the elevator incident report and tape it in the lobby so everyone can read how you tried to steal the air from a pregnant woman.”
They left.
May you like
Martha looked at me afterward and said, “Lord have mercy. You’ve got steel in your spine.”
“I had to grow it fast.”
