Chapter Two

Isolde's POV

I didn't stop walking until the sun finally let go of me.

The first big building I reached was a bank with glass doors. I slipped inside and stood by the entrance, where the air conditioner blew cold across my wet neck. The guard gave me a long look, the kind people give a woman crying in public, then politely looked away. My dress was stuck to my back. My feet burned. I hadn't even noticed I was still wearing the flat sandals I cooked in.

I leaned against the wall, pulled my phone from my handbag, and held my thumb over one name for a long time before I pressed it.

It rang twice.

"Hello, my baby."

"Hello, Grandma." My throat tightened just from saying it.

"Have you told him?"

That was the first thing she asked. Not how are you, not where are you. She had been waiting on this since morning, since I called her from the clinic and whispered the news like it might break if I said it too loud.

"No," I said. "We're already divorced."

The line went quiet. Behind her I could hear a spoon tapping against a pot.

"What did you say?"

"He brought the papers. I signed them."

"What happened? Isolde, what did he do?"

"Grandma, please. This is not the time for that. I'm tired."

I braced myself for the lecture. Go back and tell him about the baby. Think of the child. Think of what people will say. Any other relative would have started before I finished talking.

"Okay," she said.

Just that. Soft and steady, like a blanket settling over my shoulders.

I pressed my fist to my mouth so the guard wouldn't hear me. She never argued with me. I lost my parents when I was seven, and she took my hand at the graveside and never really let go. She became my mother, my father, my best friend, the only person who ever got the real me. Whatever I chose, she stood behind it, even when it was foolish.

"Where are you?"

"Downtown. At a bank."

"Come home, right now. I'll warm the food. And take a cab, don't walk in this sun."

"Yes, Grandma."

I hung up and stood there with the phone against my chest until my breathing slowed.

Outside, a yellow cab stopped the moment I raised my hand. The driver was an older man with a toothpick in his mouth and a little cross swinging from his mirror. I gave him the address on Marlowe Street and he pulled into traffic without a word. I was grateful for that. I checked my phone. No missed calls. Not one message. Some stupid part of me had still expected something, anything. I turned the screen face down on my lap and watched the city slide past, the office towers, the street vendors, couples holding hands at the crossing, and wondered how everything could look so normal.

At the second red light his eyes found mine in the mirror.

"Long day, miss?"

"You could say that."

"Mine too." He moved the toothpick to the other side. "Whatever it is, it looks smaller in the morning. Thirty years of driving, that's the only thing I've learned."

"I hope you're right."

"I'm usually right about two things. Traffic and heartbreak." He winced. "Sorry. None of my business."

"It's okay."

When we reached Marlowe Street my chest ached. The little house at the end of the road looked the way it always did, the gate paint peeling, Grandma's tomato plants lined up in old paint buckets, one bulb flickering over the door. I paid the driver.

"Take care of yourself," he said, and drove off.

I hadn't even touched the gate when the front door opened.

Grandma stood there in her faded blue house dress, gray hair tied in a scarf, glasses sliding down her nose. She looked smaller than I remembered, or maybe I had forgotten what it felt like to be looked at by someone who loved me.

"Come here," she said, and opened her arms.

I walked into them. She smelled like soap and pepper and every Sunday of my childhood.

"Don't cry, baby. Everything will be fine."

"Yes, Grandma," I said.

I swear I meant to stay calm. I told myself I had cried enough in that hallway, on that walk, in that cab. But the second her hand pressed the back of my head, something gave way. I didn't even notice when the tears started. They soaked into her shoulder and then I was sobbing so hard my whole body shook.

"Shh. I've got you."

"Five years," I choked. "I wasted five years."

"You wasted nothing. Come inside."

She walked me through the sitting room with one arm around my waist, as if I might fall. Same sofa with the crocheted cover. Same television with the cracked corner. Same photograph of my parents smiling on a beach I never got to see with them. The house smelled of onions and pepper, and it smelled like being safe, and I almost cried again.

My old room was waiting. Bed made, window open, a small pot of basil on the sill that hadn't been there before.

"I dusted this room every Sunday," she said, when she saw me looking. "Don't ask me why. I just never believed you'd stay gone."

I sat on the edge of the mattress. She sat beside me and took my hands between hers. Her skin was thin and dry, her knuckles swollen.

"I won't ask what he did," she said. "Not tonight. When you're ready, you'll tell me."

"Thank you."

"But tell me one thing. Did he put his hands on you?"

"No. Nothing like that." I wiped my face with my wrist. "He didn't have to."

She nodded slowly, like that was somehow worse. Maybe it was.

I looked down at my stomach, then back at her.

"He doesn't know about the baby, Grandma. And he never will."

She studied me for a long moment. I knew that look. She gave it to me before every big decision I ever made, the one that asked are you sure, and then waited.

"Isolde."

"I promise you," I said. My voice was hoarse, but I meant every word. "He will never know about this child."

"Okay," she said, and squeezed my hands. "Then it's ours."

Ours. That one word nearly broke me again.

Her palm settled on my stomach, so light it barely touched. "How far along?"

"Seven weeks. The doctor said everything looks fine."

"Seven weeks," she whispered, and her eyes went wet. "A small one. Strong already, like you."

Then she cleared her throat and stood up with a little grunt. "Wash your face. Change out of that dress. I'll bring you something to eat."

"I'm not hungry."

"You're eating for two now. I didn't ask if you were hungry."

Despite everything, I laughed, a wet, cracked little laugh, but real.

When she left, I peeled off the cream dress I'd put on that morning with so much hope and dropped it on the floor. I pulled on an old T-shirt from the wardrobe, soft from a hundred washes, and sat on the bed until I heard plates clatter.

She came back with a tray. Rice and stew, a boiled egg, a glass of water, and half a ripe plantain I knew she'd been saving for herself.

"Grandma, this is yours."

"It's yours now. Eat before it gets cold. And don't blame the cook if the stew is salty. I was thinking about you while I seasoned it."

She sat in the chair by the window, hands folded, watching me the way she had when I was little and refused my vegetables. I took one bite, then another. I hadn't realized how empty I was. Halfway through I was crying again, quietly, tears dropping into the stew, and she pretended not to see.

When I finished she took the tray, kissed my forehead, switched off the main light, and left the little lamp burning.

"Sleep, my baby. Tomorrow is another day."

"Goodnight, Grandma."

The door closed softly.

I lay down and pulled the thin blanket to my chin. The ceiling fan creaked. Somewhere down the street a dog barked, a motorbike whined past, and then it was quiet. Too quiet. I put my hand on my stomach and waited to feel something, but there was nothing yet, only my own heartbeat and the weight of everything I didn't know how to carry.

Somewhere across the city, he was probably laughing with her.

I thought about the house I'd left. The suitcase I didn't have. The money I didn't have either. No job, no savings of my own, and a baby on the way.

And then I thought about Grandma's hands. The swollen knuckles. The plantain she gave up without a word. The cracked television she never replaced, the leaking tap she kept promising to fix next month. She was already stretching her pension so thin you could see through it.

I couldn't sleep that night. I lay there in the dim light with tears running into my ears, still crying, and the same thought kept circling until it was all I could hear. I had come home with nothing, and now I was going to add another expense to my grandmother, who was already struggling.