I boarded the plane with Isabela, but I left part of my soul in that terminal.

During takeoff she didn’t say a word.

She only watched me stare out the window at clouds I wasn’t seeing.

As the jet reached cruising altitude, my phone buzzed — a text from an unknown number.

I opened the file.

It was a photograph of Gabriela in a hospital bed, pale and exhausted, cradling a newborn in a pink blanket.