Lila. I could not believe this was actually happening to me. I took another test and the results were the same. I was pregnant. I stared at the stick. Still. Two pink lines. Still.It had been five minutes. Ten maybe. Or an hour? I couldn’t tell anymore. My hands were cold and shaking . My heartbeat pounded in my ears like a bass drum in an empty hall. I tried to breathe. In. Out. Slow. Steady.Pregnant.The word looped in my brain like a song I hated but couldn’t stop humming. I sat on the edge of the bathtub, knees pressed to my chest, the test trembling in my fingers. A thousand thoughts crashed together in my head like a demolition site how? Well, obviously how. But... now what? What the hell was I supposed to do now?We hadn't even had a real conversation with Luca for over a week now, and I was supposed to just casually tell him that now I was pregnant. I bit down on my lip so hard I tasted metal. I’d rehearsed it a dozen ways in my head soft, careful, maybe over dinner, o
Richard. I still remember the last time I saw her, I replayed it so many times in my head that at some point it just stuck. I used to make up scenarios in my head about what would happen if I ever saw her again, but over the years I gave up.I didn't think she would ever come back, I did not even know if she was still alive. I had hired some of the best private investigators, but none was ever successful in finding her. As soon as she left, her trail went cold. It was like looking for a ghost, it was like she never existed at all. So I let it go and over the years accepted that I might never see her again or find out what happened to her. Clearly I was wrong, because she was back in the flesh and she still looked the same, but age had catched up. "Richard." she said, My name. That voice. I hadn’t heard it in twenty five years, and still, it hit like a freight train. I didn’t move right away. Thought maybe it was a ghost, a trick of the old walls. "Jenny." I managed to say, T
Richard. It’s been four days.Four long, dragging, claustrophobic days since Jenny stood in my living room and detonated twenty five years of silence with three words: I have cancer and I am dying. And now every time I pass the mirror in the hallway, I catch my own reflection and flinch, because I don’t recognize the man looking back. He’s waiting. Holding his breath. Listening for a knock that may never come.I wanted to tell Luca about his mother, that she was back and she was dying. Anothet part of me hates her and Saw this is her karma, she did not deserve to see the amazing man Luca had turned out to become. She didn't deserve to say goodbye to him. But why was I feeling so much guilt over it. Luca came by last night, as he does every Thursday. Same routine. He brings dinner some overpriced vegan thing Lila cooks and we sit in awkward silence, pretending we’re just two men, not a father and son still sutured together by old wounds.He doesn’t know she was here.I don’t tell h
Richard. Every scenario that I come up with leads me to just doing the right thing no matter how bad I didn't want to. I know if I don't Luca about his mother and she dies without making things right with him, he will never forgive me if he found out she tried to reach out and I didn't tell him. It’s Sunday afternoon when I finally decide to do it. Two days since Jenny left again. Two days staring at the folded letter like it’s a bomb waiting to go off. Because it is. Luca texts me that he’s stopping by to help with the gutters, like I’m too old to hold a damn ladder. I tell him sure, come by. Bring that wrench you stole from my garage five years ago. He laughs in a text. Says he might.I make coffee. Black. Strong. The kind that punches you awake. I sit at the kitchen table and place the letter dead center between us.It’s cloudy outside. A fitting day for the news I was about to drop in his laps. I appreciated the fact that his wife Lila had not mentioned anything to him yet, h
Richard. The air suddenly becomes cold and I can tell something is definitely wrong by how Jenny is acting and so quiet. I shut the door behind the detectives and follow them into the living room like I’m in a dream. Jenny’s already sitting on the edge of the couch, hands in her lap, eyes locked on the floor like a kid caught shoplifting.“What’s going on?” I ask as I sit across from Jenny and the two detectives. The taller one, introduces himself as, Detective Harlan before he glances at his partner, then back at me.“We are looking into a cold case,” he says. “A missing person from 1999. You knew a man named Marcus Wynn?”The name hits like a slap. He was the reason me and Jenny fought so much in our marriage. "Yeah. I knew Marcus." He was Jenny’s friend. Or so she said. A musician. Used to crash on our couch sometimes in the months before she left. The kind of guy who always had a half smile and a cigarette behind his ear. After she disappeared, so did he.“Why are you asking
Richard. The air suddenly becomes cold and I can tell something is definitely wrong by how Jenny is acting and so quiet. I shut the door behind the detectives and follow them into the living room like I’m in a dream. Jenny’s already sitting on the edge of the couch, hands in her lap, eyes locked on the floor like a kid caught shoplifting.“What’s going on?” I ask as I sit across from Jenny and the two detectives. The taller one, introduces himself as, Detective Harlan before he glances at his partner, then back at me.“We are looking into a cold case,” he says. “A missing person from 1999. You knew a man named Marcus Wynn?”The name hits like a slap. He was the reason me and Jenny fought so much in our marriage. "Yeah. I knew Marcus." He was Jenny’s friend. Or so she said. A musician. Used to crash on our couch sometimes in the months before she left. The kind of guy who always had a half smile and a cigarette behind his ear. After she disappeared, so did he.“Why are you asking
Luca.I wasn’t even sure how I got home. The sidewalk bent and curved like a snake, and the streetlights flared and flickered like firecrackers, and I was just stumbling through it all like I didn’t belong in the world anymore. My keys missed the lock three times before the door gave way under my weight. The house was too quiet. Like it knew something I didn’t.My head buzzed like a goddamn beehive. My stomach was a pit. Everything in me was too full, too much whiskey, too many thoughts, too many years of things I never said out loud.I didn’t mean to go to her room.I didn’t even think. My feet just carried me there. Like they remembered something I had forgotten.Lila’s door was open. That soft glow of her bedside lamp leaked into the hallway, golden and warm. She was curled up on her bed, legs folded, book in hand, glasses perched low on her nose like they always were when she got serious about something. Her eyes flicked up when I leaned against the doorframe like I was trying to
Lila. We all sit down on the floor, our legs crossed facing each other, the letter in his hand. I nudge him to go ahead and open it. It's now or never. Luca’s fingers tremble as he breaks the seal on the letter. I watch his knuckles, turn white against the yellowed paper, and my heart is a fist punching inside my ribs.He doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t look at me. Just starts reading.I feel useless. Like I’m standing at the edge of a cliff watching someone I love tumble off it in slow motion and there’s nothing I can do to catch him. Nothing I can say to soften the crash.The silence is unbearable. I move closer to him. “Luca?” I say softly, His eyes scan line after line, but it’s like the words are dragging him under. His jaw is clenched so tight I swear I can hear the tension grinding in his teeth. When he finally speaks, it’s a whisper, brittle and sharp like glass underfoot.“She says she left because of him. My dad. She says... she wanted to come back. But he threatened her.”
LucaI had tried calling her several times, her phone went straight to voice mail. I knew she was mad at me but this was absolutely pissing me off. She knew I hated it when she never picked her phone, especially now that she was pregnant. I called Maria who answered on the second ring. "Hey, put Lila on the phone Maria." I said as soon as she picked up. "She is not yet home sir.""What do you mean she is not home yet, she left the office a couple of hours ago." something was definitely not right. I checked the watch it had been atleast four hours since she left the office, she should be home by now. "She said she was stopping by the market to pick up some groceries to cook for you sir." Maria said, getting me out of my head, "She said she wanted to make you something special." Maria added. "She should be home by now, I am on my way." I said hanging up. I immediately sent my security her number and told him to track her and find out where she was as I rushed to the car. I had t
Lila. Today had not gone how I had imagined it will at all. First an interruption this morning, then the whole Vanessa scenario and now I was fighting with Luca. I hated when we were on bad terms, and it sucked even more because I was really looking forward to spending some quality time together. But nothing was going to kick me down, I still had some time to turn the day and night around. I had called Maria from the office and given her a list of groceries to get, I was going to cook an apology dinner for Luca, he loved spaghetti and meat balls and lucky enough that was my speciality. The drive home was not supposed to take this long, but there had been a little bit of traffic due to some drizzling. My hands were on the wheel. The road was wet, shimmering in the headlights. A song was playing. Something soft. Something forgettable. Then something happened, something I couldn't really explain. All I heard was metal crunching. Glass exploding. Weightlessness. Screams, my own scr
Luca. I was halfway down the hallway, flipping through emails on my phone, when I nearly collided with someone turning the corner too fast.“Whoa.... Vanessa?” I said, as soon as I saw her face looking around a little confused, "Did we have a meeting?" She didn’t stop. Just brushed past me like I wasn’t even there, eyes glassy and wide, shoulders stiff like she was holding herself together with string.“Vanessa.. wait.” I yelled at her even more confused, she seemed pissed, like she had seen a ghost. She kept walking. Faster. Like she couldn’t get away from me fast enough. And I lte her go, juts watching as she hurriedly walked out. I turned, watching her push through the glass doors of the main lobby, practically running.What the hell just happened?I stared after her, completely thrown. I hadn’t seen her in weeks, since our confrontation at the coffee shop,and now she was here, in my building, clearly upset, and refusing to even look at me? What was she doing here in the first
Vanessa. I watched Lila as she picked up her bag and the file that I assumed had all the information about me before she walked out, banging the door on her way out it echoed. The door clicked shut behind her, and I just stood there. Frozen. Humiliated.The silence in the conference room was deafening. I didn’t realize I was holding my breath until my lungs started to burn. My fingers tightened around the strap of my purse until my knuckles went white. Six months pregnant. She’s six months pregnant.She was six months pregnant! That's what stung me the most of everything she had just said to me because then that would mean, Luca has been lying to me way before I found out. God.I sank into the chair across from where she’d been sitting, like the air had been sucked right out of me. The room still smelled faintly like her perfume, expensive, sharp, the kind that lingered. Just like everything about her.She was so different from the woman I first men a few months ago, she was right,
Lila. I had no idea what had gotten into me, but between Jenny dropping in on us unannounced and ruining everything I had planned out for the day, I did not have any patience left in me. I could also credit my pregnancy hormones. I sat in the cold, sterile conference room, the ticking of the wall clock louder than it had any right to be. My fingers tapped against the glass table, nails clicking in a rhythm that matched the irritation rising in my chest. I’d been here for fifteen minutes already, but I wasn’t nervous. I was angry, no furious was the word. I did not plan on having a confrontation today with my husbands ex, it was supposed to be a chill day for me to take a tour of his office headquarters, but here I was. Vanessa had made my life miserable since the very first time she laid eyes on me. Even just thinking her name made my jaw tighten with anger and fury. What a bitch! She had no idea it was me who had summoned her here. The assistant had kept it vague, just said Lu
Lila. "I am so sorry about her, I promise you she was not part of the itinerary today." i say slowly to Luca who is clearly dressing up now. He looked so pisses off which I can understand given the situation, but I am hoping now that his mother has left we can go on with our day as planned." I know, I'm sorry too, about her." he says kissing my forehead."Are you going somewhere?" I finally ask, unable to hold my tongue anymore when I see him putting on his shoes,"Yes, I have to go to the office, something came up."He says it so casually, like we weren't about to have a us day. "I thought we were going to hang out." i said my voice a little low filled with disappointment."I know, but we can do that another time. Jenny messed up my whole mood, and I really need to be in this meeting." he said, putting on his shoes, "You can come with, you have never really had a proper tour of my office, I could have someone show you around, we can go to lunch after.""Are you sure? I would love
Lila. I heard the front door slam open before I even had time to get off the couch. My heart jumped, instinctively thinking something was wrong, an emergency maybe. But when I saw Jenny standing there, fire in her eyes, I knew this wasn’t a surprise visit. This was a storm. And it had my name on it.I hadn't seen her since the last time se dropped by with two detectives, she had not called in at all or reached out in any kind of way. "Richard," she snapped, stepping fully inside, her heels echoing on the hardwood floor. "What the hell did you tell Luca?"Her voice was sharp, like a blade honed over days of anger and confusion. She was glaring at me like I’d just stolen something from her. I stood up slowly, keeping my voice calm.This was the Jenny I remembered, she always was the victim even back then during our marriage. She never took accountability for anything, and ofcourse she was the same person, nothing had changed at all. "Hello to you too Jenny.""Cut the crap!" she hisse
Lila. I was still standing by the door, trying to wrap my head around the whirlwind that was Jenny, she was in our living room acting like everything was okay between her and her son. It was like she had completely forgotten how things went the last time they saw each other, and the fact that she had lied to Luca, I was still staring at her with a million different thoughts in my head, when I heard the water shut off upstairs. Footsteps. The creak of the floorboards. He was coming. He was going to come down in a few minutes and I still was not sure I wanted him to be surprised. Maybe I should just give him a heads up that his mother was in our living room and by the look of things she planned on staying here for a while. I looked over at the couch, there she was. Jenny was now curled up on our couch like it was her own personal throne, she gave me a mischievous wink and pressed a finger to her lips. “Not a word.” she whispered like I was part of her insane surprise or whatever it
Lila. The sizzle of eggs hitting the pan was oddly satisfying, almost like a little victory in my morning. I was up earlier than usual, the sun barely yawning over the horizon, painting the kitchen in warm gold. I hummed softly as I flipped the eggs with one hand and balanced a slice of bread in the toaster with the other. The smell of coffee filled the air, strong and comforting.I was in my element.For the first time in weeks, I didn’t feel tired. Or nauseous. Or like a swollen balloon about to float away. I felt good, energized, even and I wanted to do something with that. And maybe I missed doing normal things. The bump beneath my robe was getting more obvious now, but today, I wasn’t going to let it slow me down. Not when I had the whole day planned out. Just Luca and me.I was also feeling a little bit guilty about how I had approached things and accused him of keeping secrets from me, I wanted to make up for that. And we needed an us day, where we just lounged together all da