Months passed, and I was so alone. Alone, in our tiny apartment as Elena worked. Alone, but for the lingering stench of the sewers. Alone, as I forced myself to keep working at the McDonald’s and the bodega for as long as I could. Alone, as I waited in quiet dread, possessed of waking nightmares.

I visited the park when it all got to me. I visited the park and watched the lighthouse so easily cleave away what gripped me so tight.

“The Blinds are good people,” she told me, a smile on her face as she left.

“I’m sorry, Tint needs me tonight,” she told me, wiping away the weight of her worries, but not before I saw.

If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

“Go to your appointment, Alexia. I’ll handle the bill,” she told me, carefully concealing what I already knew.

I watched the lighthouse and wanted to pull its light into my chest, to let it destroy and rebuild me, to cradle that renewing beacon to my heart, a bulwark as I slinked away into the inky depths.

Elena took off her mask when she returned, traded it for a different kind. How could such good intention feel so sharp? Nick me and bleed me, leave me so drained and disquieted? My stomach swelled, and I gave our child my life—gave my solace, hard won, from a past excised. My aspirations atrophied, and I gave them gladly. Temporary misery, I reminded myself, was the price paid for a chance to give our child what I never had.

I watched the lighthouse, and it watched me.