Chapter 1: The Burden of the Feast
The roasted bird weighed nearly as much as my suffocating regret. It sat squarely in the center of the cold marble kitchen island, an absurd, lacquered trophy for a contest I had never asked to enter. I had spent hours obsessing over its skin, meticulously painting it with a glaze of melted brown sugar and dark bourbon, letting the oils of bruised citrus cling to the humid air like a desperate, forced cheer. The sprawling kitchen of the Blake residence smelled intensely of holiday celebration and cinnamon, yet my own body felt as though it were being slowly, methodically dismantled, bone by weary bone.
By the time the digital oven timer finally emitted its shrill, piercing beep, my ankles were swollen so badly they had lost all definition, spilling painfully over the edges of my flats. A deep, relentless ache throbbed in the hollow of my lower back, a rhythmic grinding that made drawing a full breath nearly impossible. I was deep into my third trimester. The child curled inside my womb had been erratic and restless since dawn, kicking violently in response to every sharp movement I made, and every invisible wave of stress I failed to swallow down. I had been on my feet since the sky was the color of bruised plums, shuffling in a hypnotic, agonizing triangle from the six-burner stove, to the farmhouse sink, to the polished counters. The rhythm of my morning didn’t feel like the joyful preparation of a family meal; it felt like a punitive sentence.
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