She couldn’t get the doctor’s face out of her mind or the way he had rolled his eyes before he walked out of the room. The other painful image from the morning was the people outside, the ones holding signs. When she’d gone into the building, women had protected her—put a blanket over her head and tried to drown out the voices with music. Those women were not there when she clutched her purse and walked to Brian’s car. And when she glanced at those who lined the wrought iron fence with their signs, she saw the looks on their faces. Like she was a murderer. They thought she had gone through with the abortion and she couldn’t shake the judgment she felt.

Brian crouched before the refrigerator and Melissa lifted her head to see inside. A plastic water jug. A bottle of ketchup. Mustard. Ranch dressing.

“Well, is this how you want your baby to live?” he said.

“Our baby,” she said.

He closed the door and put his back to the counter and stared at her. She ran through different scenarios of what they might do. How would they make it now that she had closed this door?

“We could move back in with my dad.” Even saying that left a bad taste in her mouth.

“Then you’re going to have to tell him,” Brian said.

She could tell by how quick he answered and the tone of his voice that he had run through the scenario.

“And you already know he’s not going to let you keep it,” he added. “We got this place to get away from him and now you want to go back?”

He waited for an answer, but Melissa turned her head and stared at the back of the couch. Brian was right. She was stuck. And it felt like she’d turned down the best answer to their problems when she got off that table and walked out of that room. But something inside told her there was another path to take.

“Is that what you want?” Brian said, bringing her back to reality.

Then his voice grew soft and gentle. Instead of the biting questions, he said, almost tenderly, “Melissa, we haven’t even eaten today.”

“You think I don’t know that?” she said.

He walked out of the room, and the feeling of being left alone overpowered her. She had believed from the moment she met Brian that he was the one. When he put his arm around her, when he smiled at her, she felt tingly inside, like there was nothing in the world that could matter as much as the two of them being together. There didn’t seem to be any problem they could encounter that would take that feeling away.