Lisa entered the apartment carrying a sleeping Grace on her chest. Somehow it was emptier than it had ever been before. Signs of life were everywhere; dishes in the sink, baby clothes and diapers on almost every surface, magazines, an abandoned cup of tea.

To anyone else it would have looked like a typical messy living space but to Lisa, it was an evacuated war zone.

Although it was the last room she wanted to enter, Lisa walked into the bedroom and placed Grace down in her playpen. She watched her baby stir, turn down the corners of her mouth as if she were going to cry, then settle back down to slip against the familiar smell of her blankets.

Without making a sound she curiously turned to the small closet and whipped it open quickly, in the same fashion one rips off a band-aid. Thomas had taken his clothes. She felt as if someone had removed all of the air from the bedroom and had to sit down on the bed to catch her breath.

Grace would be up soon.

Lisa pushed her way up to her mismatched pillows and crawled under the sheets and away from the world. She envied her child’s innocent and simple life. She felt a hunger pang in the depth of her stomach followed by a tidal wave of nausea and remembered.

Touching her palm to her abdomen she realized that all of the times in her life when she’d thought she didn’t know what to do had been a farce. In those moments she had known what path to take, word to say, and choice to make. She’d just been to scared to act. This was the only true moment in her life that was marked by an ominous question mark.

When she and Thomas had talked briefly and coldly the night before about a schedule for Grace and meeting with a separation counselor there just wasn’t a right moment to say, “Oh yeah and I’m pregnant.”

As Lisa’s eyes lost the battle against fatigue she decided to wait. Maybe time, for once, would tell.

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