My Husband Made Me Forget Our Dead Baby

I make it to the parking garage before the shaking starts.

My hands fumble the key fob twice before the car unlocks. I slide into the driver's seat and grip the steering wheel, knuckles white, trying to breathe through the pressure building in my chest.

The baby's healthy. She's lucky to have you here.

The nurse's voice loops in my head, bright and oblivious, congratulating the wrong man on the wrong child.

My phone buzzes in my lap.

Londyn.

*Did you see him?*

I stare at the screen. My thumb hovers over the keyboard.

*Yes.*

*Then you know. I'm so sorry, Mer. But now you can move.*

Another text comes before I can respond.

*Go home. Start documenting everything. Bank accounts, property, anything with both your names on it. I'll help you find a lawyer. You're not doing this alone.*

I press my left wrist against the steering wheel, hard enough to feel the bone beneath the skin. The pressure steadies me. Barely.

*Okay,* I type back.

*Good. Move fast. Don't let him know you're planning anything.*

I drive home in silence. No radio. No tears. Just the sound of my own breathing and the hum of tires on asphalt.

By the time I pull into the parking garage, something inside me has gone still.

I am not falling apart.

I am leaving.

---

The apartment feels different when I walk back in.

Not smaller. Not darker. Just... temporary. Like a stage set I've been living inside without realizing the walls could come down.

I set my purse on the counter beside the box I haven't moved. The doll stares up at me with its half-closed eyes, the rust-brown stain across its chest a grotesque promise of something I don't understand yet.

I turn away from it.

Focus.

I pull out my phone and open the camera. Start in the kitchen. The joint account statements Atticus leaves in the drawer by the sink—organized, labeled, because he is nothing if not meticulous. I photograph each page. The mortgage documents. The insurance policies. The investment portfolio summary with both our names printed in clean, black type.

I move through the apartment like I'm cataloging evidence at a crime scene.

Which, I suppose, I am.

In the bedroom, I photograph the deed to the apartment. The car titles. The safe deposit box key tucked into the back of my jewelry drawer.

I pause at the door to Atticus's study.

The locked drawer sits beneath his desk, unassuming and permanent. I've never asked what he keeps in there. He told me once it was work—sensitive research, confidential files—and I accepted it because I trusted him.

Now it looks different.

Now it looks like a vault.

I crouch beside it. Run my fingers along the seam where the lock sits flush against the wood. I could force it open. Find a screwdriver, pry it apart, see what he's been hiding.

But something stops me.

Not fear. Not respect.

Strategy.

If I break it open now, he'll know. And I need him not to know. Not yet.

I stand. Leave the study. Close the door behind me.

---

I'm sitting at the kitchen table with my phone open to a divorce attorney's website when I hear his key in the lock.

Too early.

He's not supposed to be home for another three hours.

I freeze. My phone is face-up on the table, the screen still glowing with a checklist titled *Steps to Filing for Divorce in New York.*

I flip it over. Slide it toward the edge of the table. Try to look like I've just been sitting here, doing nothing, thinking about nothing.

The door opens.

Atticus steps inside.

He doesn't call out a greeting. Doesn't ask how my day was. He just stands there in the entryway, his coat still on, his keys dangling from one hand.

His eyes find mine.

And I know.

He knows I was there.

The silence stretches. I can hear the faint hum of the refrigerator. The distant sound of a car horn outside. My own pulse in my ears.

When he finally speaks, his voice is different.

Not the calm, measured tone I've lived with for years. Not the careful architect of every sentence.

This is something stripped. Something raw.

"You went to the hospital."

It's not a question.

I don't answer.

He takes a step closer. Then another. Stops at the edge of the kitchen, his hands loose at his sides, his expression caught somewhere between anguish and something harder.

"Meredith. Please. Let me explain."

"There's nothing to explain." My voice comes out steadier than I expected. "I saw you."

"You saw me standing outside a clinic. That's all you saw."

"The nurse said—"

"I know what the nurse said." His jaw tightens. "And she was wrong."

I stand. The chair scrapes against the floor, too loud.

"Don't do this, Atticus. Don't lie to me."

"I'm not lying." He moves closer, and there's a desperation in the way he closes the distance that makes my chest tighten. "Adelaide's baby isn't mine. It's Miguel's. Miguel Hill. Her fiancé. The man she's been with for two years."

I shake my head. "You expect me to believe—"

"I expect you to let me prove it."

His voice cracks on the last word.

We stand there, three feet apart, the kitchen table between us like a border neither of us knows how to cross.

His hands are shaking.

I've never seen his hands shake.