My Husband Chose His Mistress Over Our Unborn Baby

I saw the car first. Black sedan, parked crooked across two spaces near the cemetery gate. I knew it was his before I even turned off the engine.

The chrysanthemums sat in the passenger seat, white petals bright against green paper. I'd bought them at the same florist I always used, the one on Pike Street that opened early. White chrysanthemums. My father's favorite. Every year, same day, same flowers.

I took them and walked.

The path was wet from last night's rain. My boots left prints in the soft ground. I could see the headstone from twenty yards away — gray granite, simple lettering, a name and two dates that never stopped feeling wrong.

Stefan was on his knees in front of it.

I stopped walking.

He had his forehead pressed to the stone. His shoulders were shaking. I couldn't hear him from where I stood, but I could see his mouth moving, words spilling out into the cold morning air where no one living could answer them.

I waited.

It took him almost a minute to sense me there. When he looked up, his face was wet. His eyes were red-rimmed and raw.

I didn't move.

He stood slowly, like his knees hurt. Maybe they did. He was older now. We both were.

"Wren," he said. "I didn't know you'd be—"

"You don't get to cry here," I said.

He stopped.

"He's not yours to mourn."

The words came out quiet. Flat. I wasn't angry. I wasn't anything. I was just stating a fact, the way I'd tell a patient their test results.

Stefan opened his mouth. Closed it. His hands hung at his sides, useless.

I walked past him. I knelt where he'd been kneeling and set the chrysanthemums against the base of the stone, arranging them the way my father would have liked — neat, simple, no fuss. My fingers were cold. I didn't hurry.

Behind me, Stefan said something. I didn't catch it and I didn't ask him to repeat it.

I stood. I brushed the wet grass off my knees. I looked at the headstone for one more moment — *Marvin James Mitchell, Beloved Father* — and then I turned and walked back down the path.

Stefan was still standing there, halfway between the grave and the gate, like he couldn't decide which direction to move.

I walked past him without slowing.

"Wren, please—"

I got in my car. I started the engine. In my rearview mirror I saw him standing alone in the middle of the path, a dark shape against the gray morning, and then I turned onto the main road and he disappeared.

---

I went to the clinic. I saw patients. A toddler with croup, a seven-year-old with a sprained ankle, a baby who wouldn't stop crying until I sang to her. I drew stars on charts. I wrote prescriptions. I smiled at worried mothers and told them their children would be fine.

At six I locked up and drove home.

I made dinner. Pasta, simple, nothing fancy. I ate half and put the rest in the fridge. I showered. I read for an hour, medical journal, new research on pediatric asthma.

I went to bed at ten.

I woke up at three.

The dream was the same as it always used to be, back before I learned how to stop having it. The staircase. Twelve steps. My hand reaching for the railing and finding nothing. The world tilting. The impact.

The silence.

That was always the worst part. Not the fall. The silence after. The terrible, absolute silence of a body that should have been moving inside me and wasn't.

I lay in the dark with my hand pressed flat against my stomach, against nothing, against a space that had been empty for seven years.

My breathing was fast. Not panicked. Just fast. I counted inhales. Four counts in, hold, six counts out. Again. Again.

At four I got up. I made tea I didn't drink. I sat on the couch in the dark and opened my father's letter, the one I kept in the drawer of my nightstand, the one I'd read so many times the creases were starting to tear.

*You are the bravest thing I ever made, and no man will ever be worthy of the fight in you.*

I read the last line three times.

My breathing steadied.

I folded the letter and put it back.

---

Friday afternoon I had my standing appointment with Dr. Adler. Her office was warm and smelled like lavender. I sat in the chair by the window, same chair as always, and told her about the nightmare.

"First one in three years," I said.

She nodded, made a note. "What do you think triggered it?"

"The cemetery."

"Seeing Stefan there."

"Yes."

She set down her pen. "What did you feel when you saw him?"

I looked out the window. A crow was sitting on the fire escape, black feathers slick with rain.

"Nothing that I recognized," I said finally.

Simone waited.

"I thought I'd feel angry," I said. "Or afraid. Or something. But I just felt… blank. Like looking at a stranger."

"Is that troubling to you?"

I thought about it. The crow flew away.

"No," I said. "It's honest."

Simone smiled, small and sad. "That's progress, Wren."

I didn't answer.

Progress felt like the wrong word for what I'd become. Progress implied moving toward something. I wasn't moving toward anything. I was just standing still, finally, after years of running.

Maybe that was enough.

Maybe it had to be.