When the Day is Done (Windswept #3)

Prologue

LUCY

Ever since I can remember, I’ve wanted kids.

I’d pictured myself with a small hand in mine long before I ever pictured myself in a wedding dress or climbing career ladders or whatever adulthood was supposed to look like.

Maybe it comes from growing up as the youngest of three, always orbiting around my older brothers with their scraped knees, loud games, and bigger-than-life energy.

Our house was chaotic in the best way, and being wrapped up in that noise made me crave a future filled with the same kind of love.

I never thought much of it then. It was simply part of who I was.

I was twenty-four when the pain started getting worse. Those sharp, twisting aches that made me double over or curl on my side through the night. I told myself it was normal. Women were built to endure, right? And for a long time, I did just that. Endured.

It wasn’t until the afternoon I found myself perched on an exam table in one of those crinkly paper gowns that everything I’d imagined for my future tilted off its axis.

The doctor was kind enough. She walked me through the details, the numbers, the what-ifs and maybes. With each one of her carefully chosen words, something I’d always taken for granted shifted from a given into a question mark.

I nodded, thanked her, and scheduled a follow-up. I think I even smiled.

The crying inevitably came later.

It wasn’t grief for children I might never have, because that was the key word—might. It was, however, grief for the version of myself who had believed something so deeply, so wholeheartedly, without ever imagining I’d have to fight for it.

But here’s the part I didn’t understand back then…

A diagnosis doesn’t close a door. It just changes the path.