I Left the Family That Never Loved Me After I Lost My Baby

The funeral lasted twenty minutes.

A tiny white box. A handful of roses. A priest who kept calling her "the child" because nobody had given her a name.

I had. In my head, she was Lily-Rose. I never got to say it out loud.

When we got home, Adrian's mother was already in the kitchen, setting out sandwiches like it was a church picnic. Margaret Kessler wore pearls to everything. Even this.

"Sit down, Claire," she said. "You look terrible."

"Thank you, Margaret."

She missed the edge in my voice. Or she ignored it.

"I know it hurts." She cut a sandwich into neat triangles. "But you're still young. There will be other babies."

I gripped the back of a chair. My stitches pulled every time I moved.

"Other babies," I repeated.

"Of course. I lost one before Adrian, you know. You move on. That's what women do."

"Was it your fault?" I asked.

She blinked. "Excuse me?"

"When you lost yours. Did everyone tell you it was your fault?"

Margaret set the knife down slowly. "Nobody is blaming you, dear."

From the living room came a soft, broken sob.

Sophia.

She sat curled on the couch in a black dress that fit her too perfectly for something bought in a rush. Adrian knelt in front of her with a glass of water.

"Drink this," he murmured. "Small sips."

"I keep seeing it, Adrian." Her voice shook. "Her falling. I keep hearing the sound."

"I know. I know." He brushed her hair off her forehead. "You did everything you could."

I stood in the doorway and watched him.

Three days. He had not once asked me if I was in pain. He hadn't asked if I was bleeding, if I was sleeping, if I could climb the stairs without the cut in my belly tearing open.

But he knew exactly how many sips of water Sophia needed.

"Adrian," I said.

He glanced back. His jaw tensed. "Not now, Claire. She's having a panic attack."

"I just wanted to know if you picked up my prescription."

"I'll get it later."

Sophia peeked at me over his shoulder. Her eyes were wet. Her mouth was not.

"I'm so sorry, Claire," she whispered. "I wish I'd held on tighter."

I didn't answer her. I turned and walked out.

The house had too many stairs. I counted every one of them on the way up. Seventeen. I stopped on the fourth from the top, the spot where her hands had touched my back, and my knees nearly gave out.

I held the railing until it passed.

Evan's door was open. He was on his bed with a coloring book, tongue poking out the corner of his mouth the way it always did when he concentrated.

For a second, he was just my boy again.

"Hey, buddy." I eased down onto the edge of his mattress. "What are you drawing?"

He tilted the page away from me. "Nothing."

"Can I see?"

He hesitated, then turned it around.

It was a house. A man, a boy, and a woman with long yellow hair. They were holding hands under a big orange sun.

Sophia had yellow hair.

My hair was brown.

"That's nice," I heard myself say. "Who's that?"

"Me and Daddy and Aunt Sophia."

"Where's Mommy?"

He shrugged and went back to coloring the sun. "I didn't have room."

I folded my hands in my lap so he wouldn't see them tremble.

"Evan, you used to come sit with me every night. Remember? We'd read the dinosaur book."

"Aunt Sophia reads to me now."

"I could read to you tonight."

"She does the voices better." He pressed hard with the crayon. The tip snapped. "Aunt Sophia is gentler than you."

Gentler.

I had sat up with him through every fever. I had held him through every nightmare. I had sung to him in the bathtub until my voice went hoarse.

"Evan." I reached out and touched his knee. He didn't move away, but he didn't lean in either. "Look at me, honey."

He kept his eyes on the paper.

"Do you really not miss Mommy?"

The room went very quiet.

He put the broken crayon down. His chin dropped toward his chest, and he picked at a loose thread on his comforter.

"I just think," he mumbled, "if you weren't so mean, maybe my sister wouldn't have died."

Everything inside me stopped.

"What did you say?"

"Aunt Sophia said you were mad. She said you ran upstairs because you were mad at her, and that's why you fell." His lip wobbled. "If you were nice, you wouldn't have run."

I opened my mouth.

I could tell him. I could tell him about the tea, the hot stain on my blouse. About Sophia's smile. About her flat palms on my spine and the word *convenient*.

He was seven. He would run straight downstairs and repeat it. And Adrian would look at me like I'd poisoned our son.

I shut my mouth.

For the first time in eight years of marriage, I didn't explain.

"Okay," I said.

Evan looked up, surprised. Maybe he'd expected me to cry. Maybe he'd expected me to yell, so he could run and tell her.

"Okay?" he echoed.

"Okay." I stood up, one hand pressed to my stitches. "Goodnight, Evan."

"It's not night yet."

"It is for me."

I walked out and closed his door behind me. I didn't slam it. I wanted to. Instead I set it softly into the frame until the latch clicked, and then I stood in the hallway, staring at the wood grain, waiting to feel something.

Nothing came.

That night, Adrian didn't come to bed. I heard his voice through the floor, low and patient, and Sophia's answering laugh.

She laughed. Three days after the funeral.

I sat against the headboard and opened my phone. My thumb found the album on its own. *Baby Girl*.

A pale pink onesie with a strawberry on the pocket. Tiny white socks with lace at the ankles. A knitted hat I'd bought at a craft fair in May, when my belly was just starting to show. Adrian had rolled his eyes at the price.

"She'll outgrow it in a week," he'd said.

She never grew into it at all.

I zoomed in on the strawberry. The stitching was a little crooked. I'd noticed that at the fair and bought it anyway, because I thought she might like something imperfect.

A drop hit the screen. Then another.

I wiped them away with my sleeve, and more came, and then I was folded over my own knees with my hand over my mouth so no one downstairs would hear me.

No one would come anyway.

When it was over, my face felt raw. My chest felt scraped hollow. But my head was clear for the first time in days.

I wasn't staying.

Not for Margaret's sandwiches. Not for Adrian's silence. Not even for the boy who had no room for me in his picture.

I slid out of bed and dragged the suitcase out of the closet. It was the blue one from our honeymoon. The zipper still stuck on the left side.

I packed my sweaters first. Then my documents. My mother's ring. The strawberry onesie, still in its tissue paper, I laid on top so it wouldn't crease.

I was reaching for my toothbrush when the bedroom door swung open.

Adrian stood there with his tie loose and his sleeves rolled up. His eyes landed on the open suitcase. Then on me.

His face went still.

"What are you doing?"

I zipped the side pocket shut.

"Claire." He stepped inside. His voice dropped low. "Where do you think you're going?"

I lifted my chin and met his stare.

"Away from you."