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SEVEN YEARS AGO

I loved you. Up until the day you decided to murder our baby.

Our unborn baby—but still.

My hands shake, and I try to hold back tears as I toss several pieces of clothing into a canvas bag sitting on our bed.

I need to get out of here, fast.

“Take the Mercedes,” you said on the phone as I walked out of the clinic earlier. “It drives like a dream. You’ll be at your parents’ in no time.”

At my parents’, right. Now that you think I went through with the abortion, you don’t care what I do or where I go.

When I told you a week ago that I was pregnant, your only words were, “We can’t. We are not ready. My business takes all my time. I can’t be distracted.”

I can. I am ready. But it’s too late for you to fix what your words have broken, what you’ve done to me in the last week.

You are a brilliant man. You’ll go far. You always get what you want at any cost, and I’ve found out some things about your business that make me uneasy. I’ve always sensed a darkness in you. It trickled into our life little by little until I realized you weren’t the man I fell in love with a year ago.

And now we are here…

You were the one who booked an appointment at the private clinic for abortions. You paid for it. You drove me there this morning, sat with me while we waited for the doctor. With no mention of the week I’d spent telling you that I didn’t want to do it. That I’d be fine. That I’d take care of the baby. If only you had let me.

Instead, for the last week, you’d kept me prisoner. You’d sedated me with some medication for days, making me compliant.

“It’s for the best,” you whispered before the nurse led me away.

And you left. “I have to go. I have a meeting. Take a cab home when you’re done.”

You hoped I’d be a coward, still high on whatever sedative you’d pumped into me. But I didn’t go through with it. When the nurse sat me down, the tears started spilling down my face. I told her that I didn’t want to do it. That it wasn’t my choice.

When I walked out of that room two hours later, I was calm, proud of what I didn’t do.

I just need to get some personal belongings from your place, drive away, and never see you again, never tell you that our child will grow up without knowing its father. I shouldn’t be driving after you’ve been drugging me for days, but I need to get away from you.

My shaky hands almost drop my laptop as I shove it into a computer bag. I pick it up, together with the canvas bag, and hurry out of the house.

My phone rings.

It’s you.

My stomach drops, dread coiling inside me. In one week, you turned from a loving partner into a cruel monster, and my heart thuds in panic when I pick up the phone.

“Everything all right?” you ask, traffic noise in the background. Your business is more important than me or the baby we could’ve had together.

“Fine. I’m fine.”

There’s a weight in my chest, a tension, a feeling that you know. That you suspect something. I don’t remember the moment I began to be afraid of you.

“I will see you soon,” you say. “I’ll pick you up from your parents’ in a couple of days.”

No, you won’t. “Yes, of course.”

My parents’ house in upstate New York is only a three-hour drive from your place in Vermont. I never want to see this place again, but now I fear that I won’t be far enough away from you.

“Once you are on the highway,” you say, “it’s a breezy ride. No cars. You’ll fly. I love you, Emily.”

Emily… You don’t call me that. You call me Em. Emily is for when you are upset or withdrawn.

“I love you, too,” I say, though this time, I’m lying.

The drive through the Adirondack Mountains is easy. I have time to think about what to do next, how to live on. Without you. A single mother.

It’s a calming drive. Getting away from you feels like freedom. An hour into the drive, my car is winding down the mountain highway, but when I brake, trying to slow down, the brake pedal gives with little resistance.

My stomach sinks—I’m going downhill, struggling to keep control of the car that’s gaining speed.

A turn is looming ahead. A cliff…

I press the brakes again, but the pedal sinks to the floor. Easily. Far too easily… My heart pounding, I jam it as hard as I can, but I already know it won’t work.

Your words flash in my mind. “You’ll fly.”

Dread washes over me like a tide.

The car speeds up, gaining momentum, careening toward the sharp turn ahead.

And then I fly…