Liana Hale was no ordinary child.


While others raced bicycles and traded candy on summer stoops, Liana sat beneath her grandmother’s sycamore tree, whispering to the wind about the daughter she would one day have. She never dreamed of grand weddings or glittering fame. Her most sacred wish was simpler—sweeter. A little girl with eyes like hers and a laugh like sun-dappled water.


Her own mother, Eleanor Hale, was a rigid woman, made brittle by heartbreaks she never named. Hugs were rare. Praise even rarer. Liana grew up chasing warmth, always inches out of reach. So she created a dream instead—one where bedtime stories were sung, not snapped. Where bruises were kissed, not questioned. Where a mother held you without asking what you’d done to deserve it.


In high school, Liana filled journals with baby names and drew crayon family portraits of herself, her imagined daughter, and no one else. Love was not required, she thought—only intention. But life had a strange way of rewriting even the most carefully inked dreams.


Then came Marcus.


They met on a humid September evening at a jazz bar just off 8th Street, where Marcus played piano like it was prayer. His music reached inside her, stirring parts of her she’d long thought quiet. He had wild hair, warm hands, and a soul deep enough to get lost in.


He was gentle. Real. Funny in the quietest ways.


By spring, they were inseparable. By winter, married. And by summer’s end, a test stick showed two pink lines.


Liana stared at it on the bathroom sink, her hands shaking, her breath caught somewhere between a scream and a sob. Marcus knocked gently. “You okay in there?”


She opened the door with tearful eyes and a stunned smile. “We’re pregnant.”


They painted the nursery lilac. Marcus played soft jazz as he built the crib. Liana spoke to her belly daily, reading Goodnight Moon and humming old lullabies her grandmother used to sing when Eleanor wasn’t around.


“I’ll love you better,” she promised