I didn’t sleep on the flight. I was wired with anger and energy. My thoughts seethed, anxious to get out and unleash themselves with a fury upon Ashton, but I couldn’t bring myself to. I reasoned that it wouldn’t be proper conduct in front of the baby, and besides, spending the next six hours in a metal box with the person you’d just berated was an obvious way to make a bad situation even worse.

We landed in the evening, and no sooner had we disembarked the plane than I noticed that there were not one, but two, tinted black SUVs waiting on the tarmac, their engines idling.

“What’s this?” I asked him, the first words I’d spoken in hours. My throat was dry from inactivity.

“Cars,” he replied, his tone sarcastic and scathing.

I wrestled with my baser instincts, convincing myself to maintain my temper.

“Yes, Ashton, I know they’re cars.” I took a breath, and tried to modulate my voice. “I’m asking why there are two of them.”

Okay, so I wasn’t totally able to keep my rage in check. Tears welled in my eyes, but I refused to let them erupt. I had to stay strong.

“I need to go straight to the office, and I don’t have time to drop you off,” he explained, no emotion in his tone. He sounded like an android, like some sort of monstrous robot that resembled a human in face alone.

Swallowing my pride and remembering my manners (even though Ashton had clearly forgotten his), I began, “Well, thanks for the trip—”

“Don’t mention it. See you.”

With that, he turned on his shiny heel and stormed off to one of the black SUVs, leaving me and Levi alone on the runway. My tears broke free and my shoulders shook as I watched Ashton slide into his car without sparing me so much as a single, solitary glance.

It was all wrong. Tremendously, horribly wrong. The past few days twisted in my memory, as I attempted to reconcile the ecstasy of the vacation with its awful and sudden ending. I couldn’t fit the pieces together in a way that made sense. Was I going crazy? Was there some obvious answer I was totally missing? My mind was spinning out, and I wasn’t sure I’d be able to rein it back in.

I needed to get home before I had a complete breakdown. Relenting, I allowed the driver of the other car, the one Ashton had left behind, to load my luggage into the trunk. I climbed in, and buckled Levi into the waiting car seat; at least Ashton seemed to not hate me so much that he’d forget something as vital as a car seat. Here I was, grateful that a man who I had serious feelings for hours ago had done me the courtesy of thinking about my baby’s safety. God, how far the bar had dropped for chivalry.

The drive back to my place was brisk and dismal. Levi cried the whole way; he was teething, so I couldn’t really blame him. Besides, if I wasn’t a full-grown adult, I’d be doing the same thing right about now.

All I could picture with clarity and calmness was the warm promise of my bed. Nothing bad happens in bed. I’d just plop my face down on the pillow and try to wash the past few days from my mind, with a power hose, if need be.

We arrived at my apartment with little fanfare, and I held Levi in my arms as the driver unloaded our things at the curb. This guy wasn’t Benjamin, though, and didn’t offer to carry them all the way up to my apartment; at every turn, I was being reminded that my clock had struck midnight, and everything was turning back into pumpkins and rats. Who was Ashton in this story? The prince, or the villain?

Struggling to manage the luggage with just one free hand, I tottered towards the door with Levi balanced on my other hip. The suitcase handle fell from my grasp several times, and each time, I grew angrier. Luckily, no neighbors were around to hear me fume.

With immense difficulty, I made it through the entrance and up the stairs. I huffed and puffed with my boy and bags all the way up to my apartment, and—

Shit.

Taped onto my front door was a neon pink piece of paper. Across the top of the letter, in bold, size thirty font, read the word: “NOTICE.”

“No, no, no. That can’t be right,” I said to myself. Levi looked up at me, his little face totally ignorant of the calamity that was befalling his mother.

My eyes darted across the page as I attempted to comprehend the information printed there.

It was even worse than I thought.

No warning about late rent, or a markup in prices—nothing that could be solved by a simple call to the landlord.

Instead, the paper informed me that the building was being sold to make way for new, luxury accommodations. The entire apartment complex would be razed to the ground. The letter didn’t need to say the obvious: that this new building would be well out of the price range of the middle-class people who inhabited the existing one.

Frantic, I looked down the hall. Every door bore the same telltale pink paper, like the mark of red blood on doors in ancient Egypt.

I read on, at last coming to the worst of it, the line that specified: You have thirty days to vacate the premises.

Stunned, I resorted to mechanical movements. Hold the baby. Grab the luggage. Open the door. Keep doing the things you need to do, and maybe then your entire upside-down world will feel normal.

I entered my home—though it wouldn’t be such for much longer—set the luggage down with a dull thud, and prepared Levi for bed. I moved like a woman possessed.

Once Levi was in his crib, and I had no more distractions at my disposal, I sat at my kitchen table and let the tears that had threatened all day spill forth.

One month.

There was no way I’d be able to buy a place; even if I raided Levi’s college fund, I couldn’t possibly scrape together the money. Sure, his one-day gig for Swann Innovations—the name made me violently jerk away from the thought—even that, wouldn’t begin to cover the expense of finding another home. With my credit shredded to pieces by Kyle’s debts, I’d be hard-pressed to find an apartment that would take me in.

A day ago, even a few hours ago, I might’ve asked Ashton for help. It would’ve killed my pride, but I’d have done it. A mother will do anything to keep a roof over her baby’s head.

But that was then. That was the old Ashton.

The new one? The hard, unfeeling Ashton who had materialized this morning out of thin air? There was no way I could turn to him; I was doubtful he’d even be sympathetic to my plight. How had the bottom dropped from beneath me so quickly? I was falling and falling, without any signs of hitting solid rock.

I think what hurt the most was the realization that I may have been the one who was wrong. Ashton had tried to warn me about who he was. I’d just been too stubborn to listen.

My apartment was thirty days away from no longer being mine; I was about to be priced out of my hometown, from the only city I’d ever known. And, if Ashton really cared as little for me as his actions today had suggested, I might be out of a job as well—either he’d fire me, or I’d have to quit from sheer mortification.

I was back to square one, back to feeling utterly alone and hopeless, scared for my child, worried about money, and unsure of my future.

I let out another sob, and laid my head on the kitchen table, praying for sleep to come and take me out of this waking nightmare.