Chapter 7
At the time, his reasoning sounded caring.
We could afford one income.
I needed less stress.
Home would be easier.
Years later, rebuilding a résumé felt like introducing myself to a stranger.
Rebecca connected me with a friend who ran a neighborhood nonprofit.
They needed part-time help organizing financial records.
The salary wasn’t impressive.
The office coffee was terrible.
I loved it.
Numbers behaved.
A total was either correct or it wasn’t.
A receipt did not accuse you of remembering it incorrectly.
My supervisor, Lena, discovered quickly that I was good at finding mistakes.
“You have the patience of a forensic accountant,” she told me.
“I’ve spent years looking for things that didn’t add up.”
I meant it as a joke.
She didn’t ask what I meant.
I appreciated that.
Not everyone needed my entire history.
That was another discovery.
I was allowed to have privacy without having secrets.
Almost a year after the hospital, Margaret called about the final medical records.
The review of my previous pregnancies had been completed as far as possible.
There was no single explanation for every loss.
One may have been associated with a chromosomal issue.
Another remained unexplained.
The latest pregnancy had been viable before the hospitalization.
I sat in my apartment afterward and allowed myself to mourn.
Not the way Luke had taught me to mourn—with blame attached.
Just loss.
Three pregnancies.
Three imagined bedrooms.
Three lists of names I had never finished.
For years, the grief had belonged to an argument.
Now I let it belong to me.
That evening Rebecca came over carrying takeout.
She found me sitting on the balcony.
“You want company?”
“Yes.”
She sat beside me.
After a while, I said, “They can’t tell me exactly why all of them ended.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I thought I needed to know.”
“Do you?”
I considered it.
“No.”
Rebecca looked surprised.
“I wish I knew. But I don’t need an answer before I can live.”
She leaned her head against mine.
We stayed outside until the air became cold.
Luke sent one letter.
It came through Margaret.
He did not ask me to return.
That surprised me.
He wrote that he had been afraid to tell me about the genetic consultation because he believed I would leave him.
He wrote that after the first pregnancy loss, fear became shame.
After the second, shame became denial.
He claimed he began believing his own version of events because admitting the truth would mean admitting how long he had hidden it.
He apologized.
I read the letter twice.
Then I put it in a drawer.
Rebecca asked what I would do.
“Nothing.”
“You’re not going to answer?”
“No.”
“Do you forgive him?”
The question bothered me.
Not because she shouldn’t have asked.
Because I didn’t know what forgiveness meant anymore.
“Maybe forgiveness doesn’t have to mean anything between me and Luke.”
Rebecca waited.
“Maybe it means I don’t want to carry him into every room I enter.”
“That sounds reasonable.”
“I’m still angry.”
“You’re allowed to be.”
“I probably will be sometimes for years.”
“Also allowed.”
I smiled.
“I’m not writing back.”
“Then don’t.”
May you like
That became my answer.
Silence, for once, was mine to choose.
