Danielle sat in the back of the taxi and stared out the window. She watched the traffic and the buildings of downtown approaching. She wiped her cheeks and batted back the tears that threatened to spill out.

She just needed to get home to her apartment and close out the world.

She’d had nothing good happen since she’d moved here. She’d gotten pregnant with the cheating boyfriend that she’d moved here to be with. She fallen in love with a pilot who’d moved away and now had cheated on her as well.

She’d spent enough years in therapy that she should know how to handle any crisis.

The words of her therapist came back to her with absolute clarity. If your life isn’t going the way you want it to, do something different. Think back to when things were good and try to recreate some of the good things that were working for you.

Los Angeles. When she was in L.A. living with her mother, her life was good. She made better decisions.

She didn’t fall in love in a matter of days. She dated and moved on. Or took her time with a long-term boyfriend. The fact that he eventually cheated didn’t factor into her equation. He cheated in Houston, not L.A.

There was nothing here for her in Houston. She had no real reason to be here.

That was the answer. She would go home.

She laid her head back against the seat and concentrated on the things she needed to do to move. She would have to get out of her lease. But she was pregnant. That shouldn’t be a problem. Extenuating circumstances.

She would quit her job. Either quit or she could work from L.A. Besides one meeting a week, she never saw anyone else at the company anyway. She could work better from the study next to her bedroom. It was much more conducive to creativity than the sterile office environment where she worked now.

Why hadn’t she considered that before? She’d been grieving the loss of Joey, then Samuel had come into her life and clouded her thoughts.

She would have her mother and Grayson to help with her baby.

A smile fluttered about the corner of her lips as she realized that she and her mother could raise their babies together. They would be like siblings.

Stranger things had happened.

She let herself into her apartment. She would gather up her personal items, pack a suitcase, and call a moving company to ship everything else she needed back to L.A. The apartment had come furnished, so she didn’t have furniture or appliances to deal with. The apartment had been easy to move into and would be easy to move out of.

Without looking back, she turned and walked to the apartment office. Thirty minutes later, she was free. She had until the end of the month to get out.

She could be out by this time tomorrow.

She got on the phone and arranged the moving company and set up a flight out for tomorrow afternoon. It would have been so very much easier to just call her father and have him come get her.

But she wasn’t ready to tell him.

She felt like her life was a total wreck, and she didn’t want him to know just yet how bad things were going for her.

Tomorrow morning, she would go to work and talk to her boss about either quitting or working from L.A. All she had to do was to tell them she was pregnant. Everyone so far had reacted in such a cooperative way. Pregnancy was like a golden ticket to getting whatever she needed.

She hauled one suitcase onto the bed and began packing her clothes. After a few minutes, she rolled out her large suitcase. Just about everything she owned was going to fit in these two suitcases.

Her phone rang while she was in her closet gathering up shoes. She recognized the ring tone. It was Samuel. She didn’t answer.

A few minutes later, her phone indicated that he’d left a message. He rarely left messages. He said he always managed to bungle them up.

As she pulled underwear from the dresser, she got a text. She ignored that, too.

She had nothing to say to Samuel Johnson and didn’t want to hear anything he had to say.

She was done. She was going to take herself and her baby out of here.

By sundown, she had two suitcases standing by her front door and yellow sticky notes on everything she wanted to have shipped. Her Apple TV, a painting she’d brought with her, and a few other things.

She pulled out a trash bag and emptied the refrigerator. As she dragged it out to the trash bin at the curb, her phone rang again.

She went back inside and looked around. Everything was done.

She took a glass of orange juice from the refrigerator, one of the few things left, and went to sit on her sofa next to the teddy bear Samuel had made for her - Pappa. With his little flight suit and goggles, wearing a little stuffed camera around his neck.

What she wouldn’t give for glass of wine right now.

She put her feet on the sofa and picked up the baby name book she and Samuel had spent so much time highlighting and laughing about. There were times she’d forgotten, and it had felt like it was their baby she was carrying.

She was exhausted. She remembered how he’d cooked for her while she rested. But Samuel wasn’t there to make dinner. Or rub her feet.

Those days were over. Yet she was surrounded by reminders of him.

With the baby name book in her lap, she unlocked her phone and played back her messages.