Daniella began walking. She had no particular direction in mind. Her feet moved simply because standing still felt worse... standing still meant thinking, and thinking meant returning to the question she did not yet have the strength to answer. She did not want her mind going there right now.
What could have happened?
He had been the one to suggest the date. He had been the one to book the appointment, to circle it on the small paper calendar on her kitchen wall, to say with quiet, steady confidence, I'll be there before you. Don't worry, Dani. I'll be there first.
Her hand fell from her chest without her noticing. It moved downward and settled against the soft, barely visible curve of her stomach.
Two months. She was two months along, though some mornings it still did not feel real, like a fact that belonged to someone else's life and had ended up attached to her name by mistake. The night itself was mostly unclear in her memory, cheap wine at a friend's engagement party, laughter that belonged to someone else, decisions she would not have made with a clearer head. She did not remember his face. She was not certain she had ever known who it was.
But the result was real. The baby existed.
Carlos had known from the beginning. She had told him on their third time together, shaking slightly, having rehearsed what she would say, certain it would end everything before it properly started. Instead, he had gone quiet for a moment, then reached across the table and placed his hand over hers. "It is not ideal," he had said. "But what is? We will figure it out. I am not going anywhere."
She had believed him.
She had believed every word he had said to her.
The wind moved between the buildings, and Daniella pulled her arms tighter around herself. Around both of them. Her boots struck the pavement in a slow, uncertain rhythm as she walked, no longer sure whether she was moving toward something or only away from the place where she had almost, almost, become someone's wife.
Somewhere behind her, the registration office was already calling number twenty-one.
She was a cancelled appointment. A case that would have to start over. If she ever gathered enough courage to try again, they would have to begin from the beginning, new booking, new date, and the particular discomfort of sitting in that waiting room again, watching other people's joy pass in front of her.
She walked faster.
"Daniella!"
She heard her name before she located the face. Mrs. Ferreira, the baker's wife, stood outside the small pharmacy with a paper bag under one arm. Her eyes moved over Daniella's white dress, her empty hands, the absence of a husband beside her, and her expression shifted from warm recognition to something more careful and sympathetic.
"Daniella, are you all right? Did you— did you get married, sweetheart?"
Daniella opened her mouth and closed it again. She did not know what the right answer was.
"Where is Carlos? I thought today was the day, my husband and I were just saying this morning..." The woman's voice trailed off, uncertain how to continue when Daniella was standing there completely alone.
"I'm fine, Mrs. Ferreira." Her voice came out smaller than she intended. "Something came up. It's fine."
It was not fine. Nothing was fine at that moment. If Carlos had other plans or had been delayed, he could have called and told her. She had not received a single message from him all day, from morning until now.
She kept walking before the woman could ask anything more, but the encounter had barely ended before the next one began. A classmate from her Tuesday morning lectures saw her from across the street and waved with too much enthusiasm. An older man who drank at the same bar as her father called out from outside his doorway, "Montenegro! You a married woman now?" and laughed in the easy, unaware way of someone who did not yet know the answer.
That was the particular difficulty of a small town.
Everyone knew your name. Everyone knew your circumstances. And today, everyone knew she had been supposed to get married.
Who did not know what was happening in her life?
It was the kind of place where information traveled faster than the people it concerned. They knew about her father, everyone did, the way he moved between the betting shop, the casinos, and the bar like a man following a fixed routine, how the gambling had taken everything their family had saved long before Daniella was old enough to understand what savings meant. They knew about her brother, built from the same material, charming and careless and always one bad decision away from a serious problem. They knew she was in college, good for her, that one, she is trying, and they knew, or had suspected, or had whispered to one another in the way small towns pass information quietly, about the nights she spent working at the club on the edge of town.