Chapter 1: After the Storm Breaks
Chapter 1: After the Storm Breaks
The first thing I noticed after the crying stopped was the silence.
Not the peaceful kind.
The kind that follows something irreversible.
My daughter lay against my chest, warm and impossibly real, her tiny fingers curling and uncurling as if testing the world she had just entered. The storm outside still raged, but inside the room everything had shifted.
Nothing would ever return to what it was before 4:12 a.m.
Dr. Daniel Brooks checked her vitals with steady hands, as if the night had not just rewritten my entire life.
“She’s strong,” he said quietly.
I let out a shaky breath. “She had to be.”
Rachel stood near the wall, still shaking with anger she had no outlet for. Every few seconds, she looked at my phone like it had personally betrayed me.
It had.
Just not in the way I understood yet.
I turned my head slightly toward the door.
May you like
Every instinct told me Michael would walk in any second, breathless, apologizing, explaining, making it all make sense in the clumsy way people do when they realize they’ve crossed a line they can’t uncross.
But the door stayed closed.
