I buried my husband a day before I buried my daughter. Three years later, he moved into the apartment next door with another woman and a child named after me. What followed wasn’t just betrayal; it was the unraveling of a lie big enough to destroy us all.
They buried my husband in a closed casket. I was eight months pregnant when I watched them lower him into the ground.
No one would let me see his face.
They said the crash had been too severe. They said I should remember him the way he was, as if memory could ever compete with a coffin.
No one would let me see his face.
**
By the next morning, the baby I was carrying stopped fighting, too.
In less than 48 hours, everything we had planned… was gone.
**
Now, three years later, I lived in a third-floor apartment in a different city with blank walls and no photographs. I worked at a dental office, answered phones, scheduled cleanings, and came home to silence.
The baby I was carrying stopped fighting.
I told myself I had chosen this apartment because it had large windows and decent lighting, but the truth was that I chose it because it had no memories attached to it.
I survived by refusing to look backward.
Until the banging started.
**
I survived.
It was a Sunday afternoon.
I was rinsing a plate when something scraped loudly against the stairwell wall outside. A man’s voice said, “Careful with the corner,” followed by a soft laugh from a woman.
I wiped my hands and looked out the window.
A young family was moving in. A dark-haired woman directed the movers while holding a clipboard. A little girl, no older than eighteen months, toddled near the steps with a pink stuffed rabbit clutched in her fist.
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