My daughter had been in the world less than twelve hours.
The room smelled like antiseptic, warmed blankets, and the faint sweetness of formula from another mother’s room down the hall. Everything around me was white, quiet, and too clean for the kind of heartbreak that was unfolding inside it. My body felt hollowed out. My stitches burned. My breasts ached. My legs were still weak from the delivery, and every few minutes I would look over at the clear bassinet beside my bed just to make sure my daughter was still there, still breathing, still real.
She was perfect.
Tiny, pink, sleepy, with one fist tucked under her chin and a face so soft it almost hurt to look at her. I had named her Lily Monroe before the sun came up, after my mother. Lily because my mother had loved white lilies and because I wanted something gentle attached to this child, something pure that no one could stain with their bitterness.
My husband had hated the name.
“Well, that’s not exactly a Whitmore name,” he’d said when I told him, as if the problem was branding.
That should have been enough to tell me everything I needed to know about my marriage.
