I shouldn’t have gone back to Daniel’s house. I knew it even as I stood on the cracked front step, the weight of the place settling on me like wet concrete. Four weeks had passed since Daniel announced he was taking a new wife. A new, fertile wife..

Some small, stupid part of me thought closure might look like packing up the last box myself. Thought maybe it would feel like reclaiming something, even if it was just a handful of books and a jacket nobody wanted.

Daniel had said he’d leave the key in the mailbox.

Of course he didn’t.

Instead, it was Sabrina who opened the door. Smug as ever, arms crossed tight over her too-small sweater, smirking like she was the queen of a crumbling castle.

“Didn’t think you’d show your face again,” she said, the words dripping with glee.

I didn’t answer. I didn’t even blink at her.

She leaned one shoulder against the doorframe, blocking my path until it became painfully obvious she wanted me to push past her. So I did.

“Carly moved into your room,” she called after me, sing-song sweet. “You’ll love what she did with the walls. Very… fertile.”

I didn’t give her the satisfaction of a reaction. I just headed straight down the hallway, my shoes silent against the scuffed floorboards I used to polish every week without being asked.

The guest room, the one Daniel had shoved me into when he said he “needed space”, still smelled like paint fumes and some cloying perfume that made my stomach turn.

They’d redecorated, half-hearted and cheap: a pile of soft throw pillows in violent floral prints, a crystal lamp that looked like it had been plucked from a dollar store clearance bin.

And on the nightstand, framed in gold, a photo of Daniel and Carly.

Both of them smiling, shiny and new, like the last five years hadn’t even existed.

I stared at it for a moment too long.

Then I opened the closet.

What was left of me, my life, my marriage, my years of scraping myself down to nothing, fit into a single, sagging box.

A sweater Daniel had bought and never complimented me on. A pair of sneakers I hadn’t worn since we started IVF treatments. A tangle of chargers, a cracked picture frame with no photo inside.

That was it.

The sum total of what I got to keep.

I carried the box under one arm, feeling the weight of it and somehow feeling lighter anyway. Almost out the door when the nausea hit.

I staggered into the kitchen, the box clattering onto the counter. My hands gripped the edge of the sink as my stomach twisted brutally.

I barely made it before I was heaving, the bitter burn of bile clawing up my throat, tears stinging my eyes from the force of it.

The kitchen still smelled the same, lemons and bleach and something faintly rancid beneath it.

I heard her behind me before I could straighten up.

“Wow,” Sabrina said, voice ringing far too loud in the sterile air. “Didn’t think heartbreak made you puke. Or are you finally knocked up?”

I rinsed my mouth at the sink, hand shaking as I turned the faucet.

Her heels clicked across the tile.

“Because if it’s Daniel’s,” she continued, voice dripping with fake sympathy, “that’s just sad. And if it’s not…” She let out a low whistle. “Yikes. Guess you really are the family disappointment.”

I didn’t respond. I just picked up the box with both hands, gripping it so tightly my knuckles went bloodless, and walked out.

The front door slammed behind me, rattling in its hinges, but I didn’t look back.

***

That night, I found myself in a fluorescent-lit drugstore that smelled like old candy and bleach, staring at a wall of pregnancy tests with the kind of sick disbelief you only see in bad movies.

I grabbed two without thinking, paid cash, and walked out without waiting for the receipt.

The bathroom stall was freezing, the flickering light overhead stuttering like it was laughing at me.

I peeled open the first test with numb fingers, barely registering the directions. It didn’t take long. The second line bloomed before the control even finished darkening.

Positive.

I sat there, jeans bunched around my knees, clutching the plastic stick like it might explain itself if I stared long enough.

It didn’t.

I pressed my forehead against the cool metal of the stall wall and closed my eyes.

For a long time, I didn’t move. I didn’tt feel anything except the slow, terrible pounding of my heart against my ribs.

When I finally stood, the stick still clutched in my hand, I didn’t cry.

I just looked at myself in the cracked mirror and whispered the only thing that made any sense:

“What the hell do I do now?”