At first, I told myself it was probably Braxton Hicks. My doctor had warned me I would feel false alarms for days, maybe weeks. I was thirty-eight weeks pregnant, exhausted, swollen, and emotional enough to cry over a commercial about golden retrievers. My body had been practicing for labor so often that I had stopped reacting every time the pain tightened across my lower back.
But this one was different.
It didn’t come and go like a rehearsal. It gripped. It dropped through my spine and wrapped around my middle with such force that I had to bow my head and breathe through my nose to keep from gasping. A ceramic mug sat beside the sink, half-full of cold chamomile tea. The kitchen window over the sink looked out on our narrow backyard in Naperville, Illinois, where the early evening sky had turned the color of wet slate.
I stood perfectly still until the pain eased.
Then I looked toward the living room.
My husband, Derek Lawson, was on the couch with his laptop open, the blue light from the screen hard against his face. He had been distant for weeks, but that night there was something different about him too—something restless and already gone. His jaw had been clenched since he came home. He barely touched dinner. He had checked his phone so many times I stopped pretending not to notice.
I pressed a hand to my stomach and called softly, “Derek?”
