When I finally pulled into the driveway of the home I had shared with Lucy, the silence hit me like a physical blow. The lights were off. The garden, usually meticulously kept by Lucy, looked shadowed and abandoned in the twilight.
I unlocked the front door and stepped inside. The house was cold. The faint smell of lavender vanilla—Lucy’s signature scent—still lingered in the air, but the warmth was entirely gone. Her keys weren’t on the counter. Her coat was missing from the rack.
I bounded up the stairs two at a time, heading straight for the master bedroom. I opened my mahogany dresser, my hands tearing through neatly folded shirts until my fingers struck something stiff and metallic.
Deep in the back of the drawer lay a thick, manila envelope. It didn’t have my name on it. It had the logo of Advanced Fertility & Genetics Clinic of Guadalajara.
My breath hitched. I ripped the seal open, pulling out a stack of medical documents dated three years ago. My eyes scanned the medical jargon, searching for a summary, until they landed on a highlighted paragraph at the bottom of the second page:
