Chapter 6

I woke in a hospital bed with someone saying my name.

The doctor waited until I could look at her.

"I'm so sorry. Your mother didn't survive."

I watched her mouth while she explained the severity of the head injury and the delay before help reached us. I understood the words separately. Together, they were too much to take in.

I put a hand against my abdomen.

The baby was gone too. I'd hemorrhaged during the emergency. The loss had happened before the procedure I was scheduled to have that morning.

I remembered the movement beneath my palm outside the doctor's office. The appointment slip was still somewhere in my bag. I had wanted an end to the life Adrian kept forcing me back into. I had never pictured waking up without Mom beside me, with no child left to feel moving.

The doctor stayed while I lay there. I didn't cry. When she asked if there was someone she could call, I gave her Vivian's name.

I spent days in the hospital. Afterward, I moved slowly, tiring over things I used to do without thinking. Vivian helped me arrange a small funeral once I was well enough to attend. I chose Mom's clothes and the flowers, and kept reaching for my phone to ask what she thought.

At the cemetery, near the end of the service, Vivian stood beside me.

"Your place is still there," she said. "The fellowship, the housing—all of it. I'll finish the travel arrangements when you're ready. We won't rush your recovery."

The paperwork we'd started before the emergency had kept moving while I'd been in the hospital. For weeks, my future had existed in emails I could barely bring myself to read.

Behind us, Adrian said, "What fellowship?"

I turned. He was holding a bouquet of white chrysanthemums.

"What travel arrangements? Where are you going, Maya? Why didn't you tell me?"