Eight months pregnant, I was moving slowly, as if each step carried the weight of two lives. My name is Natalie Foster, and that afternoon, in the apartment in Chicago, I forgot to put salt in the soup. It was a small mistake, but with Connor, negligence was paid for dearly.

The evening began like many others in the small apartment on the south side of Chicago, with the windows cracked open to let in the weak autumn air and the sound of traffic drifting up from the street below. Natalie Foster stood at the stove, one hand resting instinctively on her swollen belly while the other stirred a pot of soup. The smell of chicken broth and vegetables filled the kitchen, warm and familiar, the kind of smell that once made her believe she was building something stable.

She heard the front door slam.

Connor Foster came in without greeting her. His tie was loose, his jacket half off his shoulder, his face tight with irritation that had nothing to do with hunger. Natalie did not turn right away. She had learned that sudden movements sometimes made things worse.

“What is this?” Connor asked, dipping a spoon into the pot without waiting for an answer.

“Soup,” Natalie replied calmly. “You said you would be late, so I kept it warm.”

He tasted it, frowned, then tasted it again, his jaw tightening.

“Did you even season this?” he snapped.

Natalie opened her mouth to answer, but the sound that followed was not a word. It was the sharp crack of Connor’s hand against her face. Her ears rang instantly, and before her body could process the pain, he grabbed the pot and tipped it over her head. Hot broth soaked her hair and ran down her cheeks and neck, dripping onto the floor.

“Useless,” Connor shouted. “You cannot even cook.”

Natalie stood still. Her baby shifted inside her, a sudden anxious movement that made her breath hitch. She did not scream. She did not cry. She stared at the tiles and counted her breaths, one, two, three, the way she had learned to do when the shouting started months ago.

Connor walked past her toward the balcony, already lighting a cigarette as if nothing had happened.

Natalie went into the bathroom and turned on the cold water. She washed the soup from her hair slowly, methodically. When she looked at herself in the mirror, she noticed something that frightened her more than the slap. Her eyes were calm. Not numb, not broken. Calm.

“If he does this because of salt,” she thought, gripping the sink, “what will he do when the baby cries at night.”

She remembered a phone number she had not dialed in years. Brianna Lewis, her high school friend, the one Connor never met because Natalie kept that part of her life hidden.