I had just finished another overnight shift at the pharmacy. My feet ached, my back throbbed, and my eyelids felt like they were lined with sand. Still, there was no going home to rest—not yet.
Laundry couldn’t wait.
It never does when you have a baby.
Willow was asleep against my shoulder as I stepped into the laundromat, her tiny body warm and steady, her soft breath brushing against my neck. She was seven and a half months old—still at that stage where everything about her felt impossibly small and impossibly important.
She smelled like baby lotion and something sweeter I could never quite describe. Safety, maybe. Hope.
Her father had walked away before she was even born.
“I’m not ready,” he’d said, like fatherhood was a jacket he could just shrug off.
At first, I waited for him to change his mind. For a message. A call. Something.
