<b>Five Years Ago</b>
They tell her to push, they all tell her to push and she's pushing and crying and screaming and she's <i>exhausted</i>. You don't add your voice to the chorus that tells her to do something you know her body is already doing. You hold her hand and you press your lips to her temple and you just whisper to her. You whisper that she's doing so great. That she's a fucking rock star. That you love her. You don't even see the moment, the <i>exact</i> moment, that your son is born because you're looking at her and her incredible strength and you don't think you could love her more when you hear a tiny cry. An impressive scream. Your eyes immediately fill with tears and you look away from her to see your son. A creation borne of love. There are cheers and congratulations and you move from her head long enough to cut the cord and then they're bundling him up in blankets and they hand him to you but you know he needs her first. You take him in, wonder filling your eyes and you turn to her and she's the most beautiful she has ever been. She reaches out to you, but you know she's reaching for him. And you don't feel jealous of that. So many people told you that once your child was born, your relationship with Isla would change. But they're wrong. They don't understand your bond. They don't know how this will only bring you closer together.

<b>Present Day</b>

Monday morning starts with the urgent reminder on your phone that Connor has a doctor's appointment. The insistent beeping of the alarm finally breaks through your concentration and you put the paperwork aside and reads the alert: <i>Connor Immunization Boosters @ 10 a.m.</i> Its a good thing technology can be counted on because you would have forgotten, which would have gotten you into trouble with Isla.

After Connor became less dependent on his mother, you had promised you'd take more time away from the office so she could continue to kick ass at her job. You knew how much her work meant to her, and you knew how hard it was for her to be away from it. But you also knew her fierce devotion to your son. So you come up with a compromise: you'd spend more time working from home and she could go to work knowing their child was in the hands of its father and not some paid caregiver. It truly brought you joy to watch you son in the mornings, to have your ritual snacks in the afternoon, to welcome your wife home with a kiss that had not lost its passion over the years. So with little time to spare, you put your work away and shepherded Connor to the doctor.<br><br>

The day was a normal day, or it should have been. Something, however, pulled at your consciousness. Something put you on edge. Isla's last words&mdash;don't wait up&mdash;made you feel uneasy. Something about the way she said those words served to knock your world off kilter, allowed them to echo in your head for the rest of the day. Through out the afternoon. Throughout the evening. Even as you made breakfast for dinner you couldn't stop thinking about those words. Maybe it was because she was choosing to work late over coming home to put Connor to bed. It was, after all, something you usually did together, one parent on each side of your little boy. Either you or she would pick a book for the night and take turns reading pages, putting on the voices that made your son giggle with joy. When Connor finally fell asleep, you'd sneak quietly from his room and settle in for the night together, sharing a glass of wine and stories about their days. But tonight, she didnt seem to be coming home. You were a proud man, secure in your marriage, but tonight you couldn't help but feel a pang of jealousy over whatever was keeping her from her family.<br><br>

You text her a couple of times over the course of the night. Connor asks where mama is and you're forced to tell him she's working. You do bath time alone. You do bedtime book alone. You kiss him goodnight, alone. When Connor wakes in the middle of the night from a nightmare and climbs into bed with you, you comfort him, alone. In a flash of anger you shoot her another text, telling her how her son needed her and she wasn't there. Its that same anger that makes you turn your phone off, put it in a drawer, and slam the drawer shut. You fall back to sleep with your son in your arms, unsure why you can't shake the feeling that something is very wrong.<br><br>

In the morning, your alarm doesn't go off. Of course it wouldn't, you shut <i>off</i> your phone. You wake with a start because the light filtering through the blinds hits you at just the right angle. That's the first thing you notice. The second, is Connor is no longer in bed with you. That has you up. You pad down the hall to his room. The door is shut and when you crack it open to check on him, his body is in bed, sleeping heavily still. He must have put himself back to bed in the middle of the night. You head downstairs to the kitchen, expecting to see your wife making coffee. You'll have a standoff for a few minutes and then you'll forgive each other. But the kitchen is silent, the coffee unmade. Your heart speeds up.

You check the garage. Your car is there, but hers... hers is not. You don't believe she'd ever not come home; you begin to panic. You run upstairs to your phone and turn it on, hoping for a missed message, praying to god no one called you saying she was hurt. You scroll through messages and emails and then you hear a sound

<i>daddy?</i>

A perfect, chirp of a voice. But you don't recognize it. You look up and see a little girl standing in the doorway. Your eyes go wide and you drop your phone on the ground. Who is this child? Where is your son? Where is your wife?

You can't form words, but you know that the way you're looking at the little girl is making her panic. You scramble to pick up the phone, and in doing so, you see your left hand. Its bare. You're not wearing your wedding ring.

"Connor?! <i>ISLA?!</I>" you cry out, panicked, immune to the way you brush the little girl aside and she starts to cry. you go from room to room, looking for your son and your wife. You burst into Connor's room and its as if it transforms before your eyes. Its full of pinks and rainbows and glitter. Its not a little boy's room, but a little girl's.

"ISLA," you scream, running through the house. you see evidence of your life together everywhere, but even as you look at the photographic evidence of your life, the pictures that line the walls fail to bring you any comfort. As you look at them, Isla's smiling face fades from view as if she had never been there. your wedding. your anniversary. connor's birth. connor's first birthday.  and then it hits you.

He was never there. <i>She</i> was never there.

It comes back in waves that crash over you, one by one, pounding into your consciousness until your knees buckle and you fall to the ground. The wedding. the pregnancy. The miscarriage. The grief. The divorce. Your son never took a breath. Your wife didn't want to look at you, let alone be married to you. The life you were so certain of yesterday, never existed. A wail of grief escapes you before you can stop it.

The little girl finds you. She's crying and you know you've scared her and you pull her into your arms. Diana. Your precious Diana. You have her. She is real. She might not have been borne of you, but you love her as fiercely as if she was. You hold onto her and she clings to you. You whisper how sorry you are. you kiss her golden head.

Its hours before you can pick up your phone again, before you can scroll through your contacts and find the messages from yesterday. those are real. You see her words in plain black and white: don't wait up for me. It makes sense now. she was never coming home. Because home does not exist for the two of you.

You do the one thing you can think of, the only fair thing. you press her number and call. her voicemail picks up and you almost hang up the phone, but you stay on the line. You take a breath.

"Isla its... Owen. I'm... I'm so sorry about yesterday..." your voice cracks, "call me." its all you can manage before the emotion gets to you again and you hang up the phone.