helpless widow routine.”
A contraction bent me forward. I grabbed for his sleeve because he was closest, because pain had stripped pride from me, because in that moment I did not care what either of them thought.
“Call an ambulance,” I whispered.
Malcolm shook off my hand so sharply that the envelope flew from my fingers and landed in a puddle near the bottom step.
“You already took enough from this family,” he said.
The words fell between us heavier than the rain.
I lifted my head slowly. “I took nothing. Daniel married me because he loved me.”
Vivienne’s mouth trembled, but not with grief. With anger.
“Daniel married beneath himself because he confused pity with love. And now he is dead, and you expect us to make room for one more emergency.”
“This is his child.”
“Then behave with some respect for his memory.”
Another pain tore through me. I cried out despite myself, and two mourners near the curb turned to stare.
Vivienne’s face flushed dark beneath her veil.
“Get her away from the entrance,” she snapped.
Malcolm took my elbow.
For one stupid, hopeful second, I thought he was going to help me into a car.
Instead, he steered me down the steps, too fast for my body, too rough for the pain splitting me open. I stumbled at the last step and nearly fell. My hand landed in the puddle where Daniel’s letter lay soaking.
I snatched it up and pressed it under my coat.
“Malcolm,” I said, breath shaking. “Please.”
He leaned close enough that no one else could hear.
“Call a cab. Call one of your charity friends. Call whoever you called before you crawled into my brother’s life. But do not drag us into this.”
Behind him, Vivienne turned back toward the mourners. Her face rearranged itself into sorrow.
“Clara needed air,” she told someone gently.
Needed air.
That was how they erased me while I was still standing there.
The cold entered me in a place deeper than skin. Something inside me went silent. Not calm, exactly. Not brave. Just finished.
I folded Daniel’s wet letter against my chest and walked away from the church.
The Harrow cars rolled past me one by one. Black sedans, tinted windows, polished tires cutting through dirty water. Not one stopped.
By the time I reached the corner, I could barely keep my balance. My phone was dead. My shoes slid on the pavement. Each contraction came closer than the last, leaving me trembling against brick walls and closed storefronts.
A florist shop stood two blocks from the church, its window full of white lilies and sympathy wreaths. The lights were off. A striped awning shuddered in the wind.
I made it beneath the awning and sank to the ground.
“Daniel,” I whispered, because pain makes a person honest. “I can’t do this alone.”
But he was gone.
A door opened somewhere nearby.
“Miss?”
I looked up through rain and tears. A woman in a red coat stood at the mouth of the alley holding a trash bag. She had silver hair pinned messily at the back of her head and reading glasses hanging from a chain around her neck.
“Are you hurt?”
“Baby,” I managed.
The trash bag dropped from her hand.
“Oh, sweetheart. All
