Those three days on the apartment floor were the loneliest of my life, and I have never let anyone rush past them, least of all him.

I was twenty-nine years old.

I had a positive test, a body already changing, forty thousand dollars of debt, a job that did not begin to cover it, and a marriage that had ended three weeks earlier in the words you are not built for motherhood.

Every practical fact of my situation argued for picking up the phone.

A father would have meant money, and help, and someone to be afraid with at two in the morning instead of afraid alone, and I will admit that the loneliness by itself nearly made the call for me a dozen times.

What stopped me was not pride, and it was not spite.