PART 1 — THE ULTRASOUND IN MY BAG

“Sign it, Nora.”

Lucas pushed the pen across his desk.

“I have to get to the airport.

Someone is waiting for me.”

That sentence ended whatever was still alive in our marriage.

Not the divorce papers.

Not the six months of separate bedrooms.

Not even the fact that he had spent the previous year slowly becoming a stranger.

It was the impatience.

I was sitting across from the man I had loved for eight years, married for six, carrying his child inside me, and he was watching the clock.

I was eleven weeks pregnant.

The first ultrasound was inside my handbag.

White envelope.

My name.

Date.

A grainy little image I had stared at until the shapes stopped looking meaningless and became:

my baby.

Our baby.