For five years after the ceremony, Julian treated me as though I were the only breathing thing in his world. Whatever I wanted, he gave. Whatever I feared, he stood between me and it. Almost anything I asked for was mine before I finished the sentence.
Then the sea took him.
A trawler ambush off the coast, fire on the water, bodies never recovered the way they should have been. The Family called it an act of God. The Feds called it a maritime incident. I called it the end of everything.
At the funeral I could barely stand. The weight in my chest was so total, so absolute, that I considered following him into the dark. For days afterward the thought circled me like a current pulling at my ankles. It would have been easy. No one was watching me closely enough to stop it.
Then the clinic confirmed what my body already knew. I was carrying his child. That single fact, fragile as a candle flame in a draft, was the only thing that kept me from letting go.