Love’s Labor’s Lost

What struck me most when I stepped outside on that December morning was the scent in the air. Not the cold as it pricked my skin like a million shards of glass or the awkward way the sunbeams sliced through the sky. Rather the wintry, almost funereal aroma, like a coat worn for too long before it gets tucked into the back of a closet and forgotten.

I was then expecting our second child. But only my husband and our doctor knew. As we’d done with our eldest, we were waiting until we had passed the precarious first trimester to share the news. Kein ayin hara. We didn’t dare play with fire.