Chapter 71. The Day She Had Imagined

Two weeks later, Diana woke convinced that something had changed.

There was no reason beyond hope and the fact that she had spent too long listening to her own body. She lay beside Gabriel while the room brightened, imagining a conversation she had not yet earned the right to have.

She would tell him here, she decided. Before coffee. Before either of them reached for a phone.

The thought made her smile into the pillow.

By the time she came out of the bathroom, her period had started.

Diana stood with one hand on the doorframe.

Nothing terrible had happened. She knew that. They had only just begun trying. One month was not a verdict, and she had not been pregnant merely because she had imagined herself telling him.

She knew all of it.

Her eyes filled anyway.

From the bedroom, Gabriel called her name.

“I'm coming,” she answered, too quickly.

⁂

She went to work.

The new article had gone to Iris on Tuesda