Chapter 4

The date on the calendar was circled in red. One week to go. Every morning, Sarah would wake up on her hard mat and draw a small 'X' through the previous day. The simple act filled her with a thrilling, terrifying resolve. Her countdown had begun. The life she had meticulously planned, the escape she had paid for with years of small sacrifices, was finally within reach. Her heart felt lighter, her steps more purposeful. She was no longer just surviving; she was preparing to live.

As her departure date neared, she noticed a change in David. It was subtle at first. He started watching her when he thought she wasn't looking. The usual hard, contemptuous glare was replaced by something else, something she couldn't name. It looked like confusion, maybe even a hint of something softer. One evening, he came home early and found her in the kitchen, sketching on the back of a grocery list. He didn't say anything, just stood in the doorway for a long moment before turning and walking away. She felt a strange pang. It was the first time he had looked at her like a person, not a symbol of his pain, in years. A flicker of regret seemed to cross his face, but he didn't know how to speak it, and she no longer knew how to hear it.

Then, her body betrayed her. It started with a wave of nausea in the morning, which she dismissed as nerves. But it persisted. A deep, unshakeable fatigue settled into her bones. With a trembling hand, she used a small portion of her escape fund to buy a pregnancy test from a pharmacy in the next town over. Back in the cold silence of her room, she watched as two pink lines appeared. Positive. The single word echoed in the vast emptiness of her future. Pregnant. A baby. David's baby. All her carefully laid plans, her one-way ticket, her vision of a new life, shattered into a million pieces.

She didn't know how to hide it. A few days later, she was sick in the bathroom when David came home. He heard her and pushed the door open, his face a mixture of annoyance and concern. He saw the box for the pregnancy test in the trash can. His eyes widened. He knelt beside her, his movements clumsy and uncertain.

"A baby?" he whispered, the words barely audible. "Are you... are we having a baby?"

When she nodded, something inside him broke. The years of cold fury seemed to melt away, replaced by a raw, desperate hope. "A baby," he said again, this time with a sense of wonder. "Our baby." He saw it not as a child, but as a chance at redemption, a way to erase the past and build a new future. He started fussing over her, helping her up, bringing her water. "I'll change, Sarah," he promised, his voice thick with emotion. "I swear, I'll be a good husband. I'll be a good father. We can fix this."

Sarah felt trapped in a whirlwind. This was the dream she had buried seven years ago: David looking at her with something other than hate, the promise of a family. But the hurt was a deep chasm between them. Was this change real? Or was it just for the baby, a new, perfect object to replace the one he had lost? She looked at her packed bag hidden in the closet and then at the man promising her the world. She was caught between the freedom she had fought so hard for and a fragile, dangerous hope.