The house on Elm Street looked like a brochure.
Yellow paint. Trimmed hedges. The kind of place people assume is safe.
Inside, at 4:55 a.m., I was already awake.
Not because of pregnancy insomnia.
Because when your life runs on someone else’s temper, your body learns to stay on alert.
I was six months pregnant. My belly was heavy. My back burned. My ankles were swollen.
Daniel slept beside me like nothing was wrong.
In sleep, he looked harmless.
Awake, he operated like a threat assessment you could never close.
His parents had been staying with us for a week. Agnes and Victor. “To help,” they said.
