The Unraveling

Maria found the prenatal vitamin on his nightstand—a small, oval reminder of the life they were supposed to start together. She picked it up, turning it between her fingers like a worry stone, before setting it back exactly where she'd found it. Three months abandoned, its expiration date now a moot point.

In the bathroom, she gathered the loose strands of dark hair from his brush—his hair, still thick at thirty-seven, unlike hers which had begun its slow retreat from her hairline two years ago. She'd read about people who kept lovers' locks in Victorian times, sealing them in lockets or gold rings. It seemed grotesque now, this fetishizing of what was essentially dead protein. Yet she couldn't bring herself to throw them away.

Her iPhone vibrated on the counter—Sarah, again. The fifth call this week. The friend who'd warned her about David from the beginning, who'd seen through his charm before Maria had even admitted to herself that something was wrong. 'You're too good for him,' Sarah had said over drinks six months ago, when Maria had first mentioned the missed dates, the vague explanations, the emotional distance that had grown like a shadow between them.

David would be home from his 'business trip' in two hours. The same trip he'd taken three months ago, when the pregnancy test had been negative and he'd seemed secretly relieved, then disappointed in her disappointment, then distant, and finally, gone.

Maria flushed the hair down the toilet and watched it swirl away. She packed her bag—just the essentials. The vitamins she left on his pillow, a parting gift he'd actually understand.