ELENA'S POV
The sound of the city at night is usually a distant, comforting hum, a reminder that people are out there living their lives while you sleep. Tonight the city sounds like someone far away laughing; ordinary and steady. Then, like a thief slipping into the room and stealing the rug out from under me, something changes.
I'm on my side when it happens. The apartment has been full of small tasks for weeks, a pile of clean tiny onesies folded into drawers, a checklist of baby names still half-scrawled, two unassembled car seats awaiting safer hands, the ridiculous lamp boxed in the corner. We'd been trying to plan for California, for the stately, sunlit arrival we'd imagined: doctors we'd chosen, a birthing center with a view, a gentle distance from all the noise of our normal life. Then, the universe apparently decided to speed up the script.
