The memory hit me, of them all, dressed immaculately in their funeral black, sitting beside me on the sofa, blocking my view of the show I was addicted to. One after the other. Karson came last. He was the last resort, I’d presumed.
I’d taken to trying to ignore him now that it was clear he wasn’t going anywhere.
“Ah, they’ve brought in the big guns,” I said through a mouthful of popcorn, my only sustenance apart from the juices my mother forced down my throat—full of vegetables and vodka because she knew I wouldn’t drink it any other way.
“What are you going to tell me?” I asked. “That you know about death, you walk with it daily, you know it by name, and you know what I need in the face of it? That I will regret not going to a cemetery and burying our child that should be growing inside of me right now.” The words came out sharp, pointed. Speared. Designed to pierce skin.
Karson didn’t so much as indicate whether I’d struck true. He kept his gaze even. He didn’t flinch. Didn’t call me out for being unspeakably cruel. As he should’ve. As I deserved.
“I’m not going to tell you anything,” he said softly. Impossibly softly. “Of all of the things that you should have to do today, burying our child is not something I’m going to force you to do. You are going to stay here and eat popcorn and drink wine.” He gently pushed the hair from my face, cupping my jaw in his hand.
The touch seared my skin, but I didn’t pull away.
“And you can know that I will take care of it,” he said, still soft. “I will make sure our baby girl is treated right. That she has white lilies on her grave. I will carry her there myself. I will bury her myself.” His eyes glittered. “I will take care of her. You don’t have to worry. She will be safe with me. I will take care of her.”
The memory clawed at my skin. But I sat still, poised, my eyes dry.
“I couldn’t go,” I said, back in the present. “I couldn’t look at a tiny coffin that shouldn’t have existed. I couldn’t stand in the fucking California sunshine wearing black, standing next to my friends and family, burying my child.”
I stared out the window at the same sunshine. It taunted me, that cloudless sky. Reminded me that the world kept turning, that the sun kept shining, no matter what.
“So I made Karson deal with it,” I whispered. “He dealt with it alone. He buried our child without me standing beside him.”
I let those words linger in the air while I stared out the window. It was done. I certainly couldn’t change the past. I knew that all too well. But I could hate myself plenty for it.
“I fantasize about my death,” I admitted. “I know I shouldn’t say that. I’m a strong woman. What I went through is not unique. In fact, it’s shockingly ... common. The amount of women who have lost children outnumber those who haven’t.” I picked at the chair. “If men had to go through miscarriage, stillbirth, fuck, even the healthiest of pregnancies, the human race would be extinct in a generation. It is the biggest secret that it’s women who are the stronger gender. We protect men’s fragile masculinity that makes them think they’re the protectors.”
My mind wandered to my very own protector. The one whose masculinity wasn’t the least bit fragile. And who would have taken on every bit of my pain and trauma in a heartbeat if such a thing were possible. The exception to the rule.
“I’m not going to kill myself,” I assured her. “You don’t have to call whoever you’re supposed to call in such situations, have me sedated or put in a padded room. I promise, I won’t kill myself.” I tilted my head, thinking of how the words sounded. “Of course, that’s probably what they all say, and I have gotten good at lying lately, but I am telling the truth. When I think about Karson taking that all on, that tiny coffin and the tiny hole he dug, I want to die.”
Tina didn’t say anything. She just let me sit there and stew in that memory.
Rot in it.
I didn’t know why I went.
Maybe my conversation with the therapist had dredged up all of those terrible memories, and it was no longer possible to bury them. To ignore them.
So I found myself there.
At the cemetery.
Staring at the grave that was covered in lilies. Fresh lilies.
Karson. I knew it was him.
Who else would come to put fresh flowers on our daughter’s grave?
When my eyes found the words carved into the white stone, everything inside me stilled.
Hope Whitney.
Loved endlessly.
Hope.
“I do not hope. It isn’t in me. But I found some of it when I looked into your eyes for the first time. Found even more when you inked my name on your skin. And today, hearing our child’s heartbeat, I felt it again. You gave that to me.”