Philip Willis

The kitchen table, witness to a thousand of our breakfasts, felt like an icy plateau. Philip's passport lay before me—a familiar thing, yet suddenly foreign. Something inside me snapped with a bony crunch, turning the air into barbed wire.
Eloida. A name I'd never heard before now stood next to Willis. A name I'd dreamed of sharing with him.
We'd been together since college: shared companies, our first apartment, a business built brick by brick. I'd long insisted that a certain 'brand' wasn't important, but as I grew older, I wanted to become "one formula" with him. We planned to grow old together and spent a whole year trying to conceive. Four days ago, two lines appeared on the pregnancy test. The puzzle of happiness had come together, but I didn't know fate was already aiming for the back of my head.
I wanted to break the news beautifully: buy him a trip to some paradise and give him the test there. All I had to do was take a photo of our passports for the agent. We never had any secrets—shared passwords, open email accounts.
My finger hovered over the page of his passport. A fresh stamp. Months ago. While we were discussing renovating the nursery. While he kissed me goodnight.
The world outside the window ceased to exist. All that remained was the realization: the person to whom I had given eight years of my life, whose child was now growing inside me, officially belonged to someone else.
The silence, pressing on my eardrums, was cut by a sharp sound—the turning of a key in the lock. I heard the rustle of a jacket and the clatter of boots—the familiar sounds of a man returning home. But for me, this home no longer existed. I sat motionless, unable to close my passport. Philip entered the kitchen. I felt his confident steps slow down, then stop altogether when he saw what lay on the table before me.