He was crying.

But he still did not open the door.

Ava pulled her coat around herself, picked up her suitcases, and walked into the rain with a baby inside her, a torn check behind her, and nowhere to sleep.

PART 2

Survival did not feel heroic.

It felt like counting quarters under fluorescent lights.

It felt like washing her underwear in a bus station sink at three in the morning because the friend who let her sleep on the dorm floor could only hide her for so long. It felt like pretending she was not nauseous during job interviews, pretending she was not terrified when landlords asked for deposits, pretending she did not miss the mother who had let her leave.

Ava left Franklin University before spring finals. The financial aid office told her she could defer. Her adviser used the word unfortunate. A girl in her business ethics class saw her packing and asked if she was “taking time off to travel.”

Ava almost laughed in her face.

Instead, she took a bus to Boston and found a Help Wanted sign in the window of a twenty-four-hour diner near South Station called Ruby’s Lantern.

The place smelled like burnt coffee, bacon grease, and people who had nowhere better to go. Truck drivers sat beside nurses coming off double shifts. College kids came in drunk after midnight. Lonely old men tipped in coins and told the same stories twice.

The owner, Ruby Delgado, looked Ava up and down during the interview.

“You pregnant?” Ruby asked.

Ava crossed her arms. “Is that legal to ask?”

Ruby snorted. “Probably not. But I’m sixty-one, my knees hurt, and I don’t have time for mysteries. You need work?”

“Yes.”

“You need pity?”

“No.”

“Good. I’m fresh out.”

Ava blinked.

Ruby handed her an apron. “Night shift starts tomorrow. Wear comfortable shoes. If you throw up, don’t do it near the pie case.”

Ava’s first week was brutal.

She dropped plates. She forgot orders. She burned her wrist on the coffee pot. Once, a businessman in a gray coat snapped his fingers at her and called her “sweetheart” so many times that Ava imagined pouring hot syrup into his lap.

At four one morning, she cried in the walk-in freezer between boxes of frozen fries.

Ruby found her there, arms wrapped around herself, breath fogging the cold air.

“I’m sorry,” Ava said. “I’m trying.”

“Trying ain’t the problem.” Ruby leaned against the doorframe. “Trying while pretending you’re not scared is the problem.”

Ava wiped her face. “I don’t have anyone.”

Ruby’s expression softened, but only slightly.

“That’s not true.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I know you’re standing in my freezer, pregnant and crying, and I haven’t fired you. So technically, you have me.”

Ava gave a broken laugh.

Ruby handed her toast and ginger tea. “Eat.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“I did not ask for your opinion.”

That was how love returned to Ava’s life: bossy, loud, and carrying carbohydrates.

The next month, Ruby helped her find a room above a laundromat owned by a cousin of a cousin. It was small and smelled like detergent, but it had a lock on the door and a window that faced a brick wall. Ava loved it anyway.

She began prenatal care at a free clinic in Dorchester. That was where she met Dr. Elijah Brooks.

He was still a resident then, always tired, always carrying three pens, and always speaking to patients as if their fear deserved respect.