The Yellow Night-Light

Chapter 1: late night

The yellow night-light stayed on long after Daniel moved out.

It was shaped like a small moon and sat on the dresser beside a stack of newborn diapers. During the day, it looked cheap and ordinary—a piece of pale plastic bought during a late-night shopping trip. But after sunset, it filled the nursery with a soft amber glow.

Mara could not bring herself to switch it off.

On the tenth night after Lily was born, that light had been the only gentle thing in the room.

Mara was thirty-six and still moved carefully through the house, one hand resting against the wall whenever she stood up. Her body felt unfamiliar. Her stomach was sore, her breasts ached, and every few hours a thin cry rose from the bassinet.

She had imagined those first weeks differently.

For years, she and Daniel had talked about having a baby in the vague way people talk about distant places they hope to visit. They discussed names during long drives. They paused beside tiny shoes in shop windows. Daniel once held up a pair of yellow socks and said, “Imagine feet small enough for these.”

They had been eighteen when they met.

Mara still remembered him waiting outside the college library in a jacket too thin for the weather. His hair had been wet from the rain, and he had carried two vending-machine coffees because he did not know which kind she liked.

Eighteen years followed.