Three days to think, to ponder, to mourn, to grieve, to rage against her fate. It was so unfair that this should be happening. She hadn’t wanted children. She had never wanted children. Her own childhood had been so completely joyless she could not imagine ever wanting to visit such a horror on someone else. Her father had left home when she was four. It was her fault he left, her mother made sure she knew that was the case. Suzanne’s only memory of him was his voice, raised in anger, yelling at someone. Her mother, she supposed. Maybe it wasn’t even him, she was remembering? Her mother ran through a string of lovers after he left, perhaps, it was one of them. His voice, so loud in the night, even with a wall between them, Suzanne could not help hearing. It startled her out of sleep. It made her cry. No, she was sure she was not mistaken. It had to have been her father’s voice. For hadn’t her mother always said that’s why he left—because he couldn’t stand her constant crying?
