Adair nodded, and Pam turned to Sabine again. Her heart had always belonged to what wasright, even when it meant checking her own son. She’d stood by Sabine when Adair fumbled their marriage, not because she wanted to take sides, but because she couldn’t protect what Adair wasn’t protecting himself. And while she was proud of the man he was trying tobe now, she hadn’t forgotten the brokenness she’d watched him crawl through after losing his wife. She never wanted to see her baby like that again…swallowed by regret and spiraling alone.
“And baby, I’m saying this with all the love I’ve got for you in my chest. If this is just comfort, if it’s just a moment you needed, don’t let him start hoping again.” Her voice wavered there, just slightly because as much as she loved Sabine like her own, Adairwasher own. She’d held him through his mistakes. She’d watched him fall apart—quietly, painfully—the kind of heartbreak only a mother could fully see. She knew Sabine had every right to protect her peace, but she also knew what it would do to her son to get a taste of healing only to lose it again. “Y’all been through the mud, I get it but I watched that little boy’s face light up when y’all stepped out the house together. You know what that means? Y’all can’t be sloppy with this.” She looked to Adair. “If you ain’t serious, let her go.” Then to Sabine. “And if you’re only here for momentary comfort, lethimgo.”
Pam’s voice hung in the room, rich with truth, layered with warning but wrapped, inlove. Then she sighed and shook her head.
“I didn’t pull y’all in here to fuss or make you question your decision because if I had to choose, y’all like this would be what I want too,” she said. “I pulled y’all in here because Icare. I care so deep it makes me tired sometimes. And I know y’all ain’t the same kids who fell in love too fast and thought forever would hold on just ‘cause you wanted it to.” She looked at Sabine first, her tone softening even more. “You’re not that same tired mama tryin’ to hold it together in a little apartment while my son stayed too long at work. You got your strength back. I see it in your eyes. You’re clearer now.” Then her gaze turned to Adair. “And you ain’t that boy who thought ambition could outrun grief. You movin’ different. I been watchin’. You still got some stuff to prove but I see you tryin’. That means something.”
Sabine and Adair said nothing, but something more loosened between them. A quiet inhale. A shared look. That knowing exchange that came only from walking through hell and coming out magically unscathed. Pam smiled, just a little, and reached out to cup Sabine’s cheek with one hand, and Adair’s shoulder with the other.
“Iwanty’all to win,” she said. “God knows I do. I pray for it more than y’all probably know. I just needed to look y’all in the eye and make sure you weren’t setting each other up to fall again.”
Sabine covered Pam’s hand with her own. “Thank you,” she said. “For all of it. Really.”
Adair leaned forward and kissed his mother’s temple. “Love you, Ma.”
Pam nodded, blinking a few times before waving her hand like she was brushing off the moment. “Alright now, that’s enough. Y’all get out my shit before I start cryin’ and cussin’ y’all out at the same time.”
They laughed, and the tension broke for good. They stepped out into the sunlight again, this time not just as parents, not just as former lovers but as two people walking toward something again. Something uncertain. Something real. Pam stood back, watching them through the screen, her arms folded, eyes shimmering with a hope.
This time, she whispered it instead. “Let it be real, Lord…and let it last.”
TWO LINES
The crinkling sound of the paper beneath her thighs was the only thing breaking the silence. Sabine sat on the exam table, hands tucked between her knees, eyes fixed on the outdated poster across the room about iron deficiency in women.Fatigue. Dizziness. Shortness of breath.Check, check, check. She knew her body. It had to be her iron again.
“It’s probably nothing,” she’d told herself when she scheduled the appointment. Just work stress. Lack of sleep. Hormones, maybe but when she nearly fainted walking up her own stairs, she’d stopped brushing it off.
She’d been anemic before. Knew the slow, dragging exhaustion of low iron like the back of her hand. But this? This was different. It wasn’t just tired, like something inside her was shifting in ways she didn’t have the words for yet. She told herself it was her iron because that was easier than admitting what she already suspected because deep down…sheknewthis feeling. The feeling that came after letting her husband—ex-husband, have his way with no boundaries.
The doctor returned with a clipboard in hand, face unreadable. Sabine straightened, heart skipping. “We ran yourlabs,” he said gently. “Your iron is a little low, but that’s not the main cause of your symptoms.”
“It’s not?” Sabine frowned.
“You’re pregnant,” the doctor smiled softly. The word landed like a slap and a whisper all at once.
“I’m…I’m what?”
“Pregnant. Just a few weeks along, based on the hormone levels. We’ll confirm with an ultrasound next time, but the blood test was conclusive.”
Two lines.
That was all it ever took.
Sabine’s throat tightened. The room was suddenly too bright. She hadn’t been pregnant since Ariyah and even though her hands stayed still and her face didn’t move, something deep in her chest began to shake.
The doctor kept talking, something about vitamins, follow-up appointments, all the routine things a woman might need to hear when she’s expecting but Sabine couldn’t process anything over the rushing in her ears.
All she could think about was the last time.
The hospital.
The blood.
The tiny body she never got to take home.
Sabine clutched the edge of the table, breath shallow. Not again.God, not again.She didn’t even know if this was a blessing or a storm rolling in. All she knew was that something had just changed. Again. And this time, she didn’t know how to feel.
She didn’t remember checking out. Didn’t remember how she got from the exam room to the parking lot or what route her feet took down the hallway. Her keys were in her hand. Her purse on her shoulder. Somehow, she made it to the car.