Leo tried. He really did. He came home greasy and exhausted, ate the cheap pasta she made, and fell asleep on the couch more nights than not. They stopped talking about the future—college, travel, careers—because the future had shrunk to the size of a due date. November 15th. The day everything would change again.
“Sit down,” Cheryl said, her voice low and steady. Not a command. An invitation to survival.
The father was Leo Hendricks. Leo was nineteen, with a charming crooked smile and a habit of showing up late to everything. He worked at his uncle’s auto body shop, smelled like motor oil and spearmint gum, and had a truck with a bench seat so worn out you practically slid into the middle. They’d been together since junior year, a steady, comfortable relationship that felt more like a life raft than a romance. The pregnancy wasn't a wild party mistake; it was a quiet, cumulative failure of “it won’t happen to us” thinking. A broken condom in March. A missed period in April. Denial in May. And now, June.