Three months postpartum, I was still bleeding when the front door clicked open. My husband

I turned, the cold metal pressing against my skin, and smiled for the first time that night.

“It’s the part you forgot existed.”

Life after Ethan left was a series of small steps, each one heavier than the last. I’d wake up to the echo of his absence, a hollow feeling that settled in the pit of my stomach. But I had Lily, and she was my north star in the dark expanse of change.

I moved in with my sister temporarily, filling her spare room with all that I could carry. The mornings were a blur of feedings and diaper changes, and the nights were spent in a tired haze, but I found a strange comfort in the routine. It was stable, something I could hold onto when everything else felt like shifting sand.