My name is Brooke Ellis, and the morning everything began to fall apart, I was standing in the hallway of my house with my back against the wall, trying to steady my breathing while my fingers clenched around a pregnancy test that still felt unreal in my hand.
The bathroom door behind me was half open, the overhead light spilling out in a pale rectangle across the floor, and the result I was staring at refused to blur no matter how many times I blinked. Two pink lines stood there calmly, indifferent to my shaking hands and racing thoughts, quietly confirming that after three years of trying, of appointments and prescriptions and silent disappointment, I was finally pregnant.
For several seconds, I did nothing except breathe, because joy can be just as paralyzing as fear when it arrives without warning. I felt a smile forming before I consciously allowed it, and for the first time in a long while, my chest felt warm instead of tight.
I imagined telling my husband, Kevin Walsh, imagined the way his expression would soften, imagined his hands resting protectively on my stomach as if that single gesture could somehow make all the struggles worth it.
I took a step forward, then another, already rehearsing how I would say it, already convincing myself that this news might pull us back from the quiet distance that had grown between us over the past year.
That was when I heard his voice.
It came from the home office near the living room, low and relaxed, carrying a tone that made my stomach tighten even before the words themselves reached me.
I slowed my steps, my body reacting faster than my mind, and stood still as his conversation drifted through the partially closed door.
“Yes,” Kevin said, his voice edged with amusement. “I am serious.
I am leaving her tonight.”
The air seemed to thicken around me as I pressed my hand against the wall to keep myself upright.
“I cannot keep living like this,” he continued. “She is always exhausted, always anxious about money, always acting like life is a burden.”
There was a pause, followed by laughter, and something cold settled deep in my stomach.
“I want freedom,” he said easily.
“I want someone younger.
Someone who still knows how to enjoy things.”
My heart was pounding so loudly that I was sure he could hear it as I pushed the door open.
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