Lena wasn’t supposed to be home for another hour.
She stood frozen in the doorway of her own living room, the crisp white envelope from Dr. Chen’s office trembling in her hand. The late afternoon sun slanted through the bay window, casting golden rectangles across the hardwood floor—the same floor she’d scrubbed on her hands and knees just last week while Mark “worked late.” The nursery down the hall still smelled faintly of fresh paint: buttercup yellow, soft and hopeful, chosen after three hours of Pinterest scrolling and whispered dreams over takeout containers.
Now, that hope felt like a lie wrapped in pastel fabric.
Her six-year-old daughter, Ellie, sat cross-legged on the rug, stacking blocks with meticulous care. She didn’t look up when Lena entered. Her small shoulders were hunched slightly forward, as if bracing against an invisible weight. One sleeve of her pink sweatshirt had ridden up, revealing the delicate curve of her wrist—and just below it, the edge of something darker.
Lena’s breath hitched.
She’d seen those marks before. Faint, at first. She’d asked Ellie once, brushing her fingers over a thin red line on her forearm. “Did you fall at school, baby?”
Ellie had flinched. “No, Mama. I bumped the door.”
Lena had believed her. Because what mother doesn’t want to believe her child is safe? Especially when your husband—the man who held your hair back during your first trimester vomiting fits, who cried when he heard the baby’s heartbeat for the first time—is the one watching her while you rest?
But Dr. Chen hadn’t let her leave without seeing the photos.
“Your daughter came in with you today?” he’d asked gently after the routine anatomy scan for baby number two. Lena had nodded, exhaustion pulling at her eyelids. “She’s with my sister while I get checked.”
