Amelia POV

The night pressed down on me like a suffocating shroud. Sleep didn’t come—how could it, when my entire world had tilted on its axis in the span of a single plastic stick and two pink lines? I sat curled up on the edge of my bed, my shawl wrapped tightly around me, the pregnancy test lying on the nightstand like a silent witness to the chaos unraveling inside me.

The house was still. Too still. Every creak of the old floorboards sounded louder than usual, like the walls ...