She called Lauren. Lauren came over with trash bags and a playlist loud enough to drown thinking. They filled bags. They ordered Thai food. Madison cried once, hard, into a pillow that still smelled faintly of Daniel's cologne, then washed the pillowcase twice and declared the scent legally deceased.
"You're allowed to hate him and still be sad you lost the future you imagined," Lauren said, chopsticks paused. "Those feelings can carpool."
Madison almost smiled. "Dr. Patel said something similar. Less chopsticks."
The nine months of Ava's pregnancy, revisited in memory during therapy and sleepless nights, refused to remain a simple villain narrative. Daniel had not been purely monstrous. He had driven Ava to an early appointment when she had morning sickness so severe she could not take the bus. He had held her hair once in a gallery bathroom while she vomited from hormones and stress. He had also gone to Madison's parents for Sunday dinner that same evening and spoken about their future with a sincerity that was not entirely fake — which made it worse, Ava decided later, because sincerity without honesty was just a prettier lie.
At six months pregnant, Ava had asked Daniel whether he intended to be listed on the birth certificate.
"Yes," he had said. Then: "But can we keep this quiet until after... until I figure out how to tell Madison?"
"You've been figuring for months," Ava had replied, one hand on the curve of her belly where Eli kicked like a small dissent. "Figure faster."
He did not figure faster. He figured in circles. He drafted texts to Madison and deleted them. He drafted emails to his parents and deleted those too. He told himself that waiting until after the wedding would protect Madison from a scandal during planning season, as if a scandal delayed were a scandal erased. Ava watched him invent these rationalizations and felt her respect for him thin like old paint.