Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 131486 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 526(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 131486 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 526(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
“You’re being unreasonable. You want to fight. I just want to—”
“To fuck, I got that. So you can have a baby, no matter what I want. No matter the risk. Despite what the doctor said.”
“I’ve talked to the doctor again and she—”
“Without me? You consulted the doctor about having another baby without even discussing this with me?”
I grab her hand and pull her from the nursery, down the hall, the stairs, through the living room and kitchen to the garage. Away from our kids’ curious ears, this has become our boxing ring. Where, when our icy silences crack, we come to scream and screech. Yasmen’s Acura MDX sits prettily beside my Range Rover in our garage, in our elite zip code, and it should be the stuff of our dreams. But it’s instead a deep freezer, stuffed with metal monsters whose headlights glare at our inadequacies and scowl at how naive we were to think this would ever be enough.
“We’re not having another baby, Yas.”
My voice comes out hard, unyielding. I can’t lose one more thing. One more person. I can’t lose her. I wouldn’t survive it.
“It’s not happening,” I snap. “And I can’t believe after all this family’s been through, you’d even consider it.”
“We said we wanted a big family. You don’t want that anymore?”
“We can have as big a family as you want.” I take her hand. “We can foster, adopt—”
“No.” She jerks away, removes herself from me, walking around to the other side of her car, staring at me over the roof, incongruous in her gown, surrounded by the leaf blower and the water hose and the lawn mower. “I want…I need…”
She shakes her head, her expression frustrated. I know what she wants. A do-over. A chance to feel a baby kicking, moving inside of her. To see that baby leave her body alive. Not the way Henry came. Still. His soul already fled.
“Having another baby won’t fix what’s wrong, Yas.”
“What’s wrong?” Her laughter bites into the chilly air. “You mean what’s wrong with me.”
“I didn’t say anything was wrong with you, but hiding up in that nursery all the time isn’t helping. Rushing to have another baby won’t help.”
“I’m hiding? Who lives at Grits because he doesn’t even know how to be in this house anymore? And it’s not just Henry. You haven’t slowed down since Byrd died. You’ve been in constant motion. Never even taking the time to grieve. You didn’t cry for her either.”
“Stop it.”
“You need to hear this. Maybe I am stuck, Si. Maybe I can barely leave the house most days, and maybe I am going crazy.”
“I never said you were going crazy.”
“Well, it feels like it, but at least I’m letting myself feel it all. Every bit of it. They deserve that, both of them. I’m not afraid to mourn, to hurt, to grieve.”
“You don’t think I hurt?” Anger, disbelief, resentment crack my words down the middle. “Because I don’t huddle in the dark every day, barely able to function? I don’t hurt?”
“Shut up!” The pain in her eyes slices right through me, echoes around us, absorbed by the shelf-lined walls of the garage.
“We can’t afford for us to both break down,” I plow on, fueled by my own defenses. “Who do you think is keeping a roof over our fucking heads?”
I slam my hand on the hood of the car between us.
“Me! Keeping the doors of our business open? Me!”
“You’ve got it all under control, Si! Why do you need me?”
“I don’t.”
The words come out before I have time to think about the effect they’ll have. How they’ll land in the cold trapped in these four walls with nowhere to go.
“Right,” she says, her laugh void of humor. “Because you have the whole world running like a well-oiled machine.”
“A well-oiled machine?” I yank the notice from the door out of my pocket and hold it out toward her, clutched in my fist. “We can’t even afford to get our damn lawn mowed, Yas. The restaurant is bleeding money and the mediocre cook we do have put in her notice. I’m working fifteen-hour days.”
There’s shock in the eyes flitting from my face to the paper crushed in my hands.
“Why did you keep all of this from me?” she asks, her tone hollow. “Because I’m so crazy, so fragile I’d break?”
“Kept this from you? It’s been months, months, baby, since you’ve shown interest in anything,” I point over our heads. “Except that damn nursery. Barely paying attention to the kids.”
“I take care of my children!” The words ring loud and shrill. “You have no idea what it takes to even get out of bed most mornings, but I do it. Everything hurts, but I keep doing it.”
I’m silenced by the sound of her grief, at how deep her pain goes. How encompassing it is. Still.