It had been three months since Tedd vanished.
Three months since I last saw the man who once told me, "You're the safest home I've ever known."
And I had been trying—really trying—to move forward.
Routine had become muscle memory.
Wake up. Pack Max's things. Drop him off at school. Smile through meetings. Eat something forgettable. Go home. Tuck him into bed with a story I barely finish before he's asleep.
But the truth?
There was an emptiness in every corner of the condo.
A silence that mocked me.
I'd stare at his untouched mugs in the cupboard. His white coat still folded in our closet. A single pair of scrubs he never packed.
I couldn't throw them out.
Maybe because some foolish part of me believed he'd still walk through the door and say, "Sorry it took me so long."
Then, one humid Sunday afternoon, everything unraveled.
I was folding Max's socks in the living room when the doorbell rang.
It was Tedd's parents.
They had come without calling—faces heavy, shoulders tense, eyes scanning the condo like it was a place they once knew, but no longer trusted.
"May we come in?" his father asked gently.
I nodded.
His mother sat across from me, holding her purse like it was armor.
"We're taking Max with us," she said plainly.
I blinked. "What?"
His father added softly, "It's just until things settle. You've been under stress. With Tedd gone... it's not fair to place all the responsibility on you."
I stared at them in disbelief. "I love him. I never once treated him like a burden."
"It's not about that," his mother said, glancing toward Max's room. "But you're not his mother, Jaimie. And now that you and Tedd... well. We don't even know what you are anymore."
The words sliced clean.
I felt stripped. Erased.
And when Max came out of the room with a sleepy yawn and saw his grandparents, he smiled—not knowing what was being decided.
"Lola! Lolo!"
He ran into their arms.
And I couldn't even tell him.
I just stood there, hands shaking, as they told him it would be "a little vacation."
That night, I bled.
Not physically.
But spiritually.
I collapsed into bed. I screamed into a pillow until my throat went raw. Until I couldn't breathe. Until the silence swallowed me whole.
Two weeks later, I fainted in the middle of the pharmacy.
It wasn't from sadness this time.
It was something else.
The doctor's voice was calm, clinical, and almost cruel in how softly it delivered the news:
"You're pregnant."
I sat in the hospital parking lot for an hour. Just breathing.
Not crying. Not panicking.
Just... stunned.
A child.
Inside me.
His child.
Or at least—I was sure it was his.
But of course, my parents weren't.
When I told them, the living room exploded.
"You're pregnant?!" my mother gasped, clutching the side of the table.
"From whom?" my father barked. "The nurse who abandoned you? Or one of your barhopping strangers during your breakdown?"
The shame was instant.
I was drowning in it.
"I don't know," I whispered. "I mean—I do... I think. It has to be Tedd. We were careful before him. I haven't been with anyone else—"
"But you don't know for sure," my mother snapped.
I sat in silence. Every defense gone.
Because even though my heart screamed I know it's his...
Even though I remembered the rain, the kiss, the warmth, the way he touched me like I was something fragile and precious—
The timelines were blurry.
The doubt wasn't.
And doubt, in this family, was enough to condemn.
That night, I lay in bed staring at the ceiling.
My hand over my stomach.
"I'm sorry," I whispered. "You deserved better than this."
And deep inside me, a voice answered.
So did you.
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