Months passed, and I was so alone. Alone, in our tiny apartment as Elena worked. Alone, but for the lingering stench of the sewers. Alone, as I forced myself to keep working at the McDonald’s and the bodega for as long as I could. Alone, as I waited in quiet dread, possessed of waking nightmares.

I visited the park when it all got to me. I visited the park and watched the lighthouse so easily cleave away what gripped me so tight.

“The Blinds are good people,” she told me, a smile on her face as she left.

“I’m sorry, Tint needs me tonight,” she told me, wiping away the weight of her worries, but not before I saw.

“Go to your appointment, Alexia. I’ll handle the bill,” she told me, carefully concealing what I already knew.

I watched the lighthouse and wanted to pull its light into my chest, to let it destroy and rebuild me, to cradle that renewing beacon to my heart, a bulwark as I slinked away into the inky depths.

Elena took off her mask when she returned, traded it for a different kind. How could such good intention feel so sharp? Nick me and bleed me, leave me so drained and disquieted? My stomach swelled, and I gave our child my life—gave my solace, hard won, from a past excised. My aspirations atrophied, and I gave them gladly. Temporary misery, I reminded myself, was the price paid for a chance to give our child what I never had.

I watched the lighthouse, and it watched me.