CHAPTER 2 — TWO MONTHS OF SILENCE
“You’re shaking,” I said.
Emily shook her head too quickly.
“I’m okay.”
“No, you’re not.”
“I’m fine.”
I lifted her chin gently.
“Look at me.”
She tried.
For two seconds, maybe three.
Then her face crumpled.
She wrapped both arms around me and sobbed into my chest like she had been holding herself together with thread and someone had finally cut it.
Not one hard day.
Not one bad dinner.
This was the sound of a person who had been breaking quietly for a long time.
I held her with one arm and kept my other hand near her stomach.
“What happened?” I asked.
She cried harder.
“My mom?” I asked.
She nodded against me.
“My sisters?”
Another nod.
I looked toward the living room, where the television still laughed for them.
“How long?”
Emily’s fingers tightened in my shirt.
“About two months.”
For a moment, I could not move.
Two months.
While I worked double shifts.
While I picked up extra weekends.
While I paid my mother’s pharmacy bills and Brittany’s phone plan and Kayla’s car insurance and Lily’s overdraft fees.
While I told myself I was keeping everyone afloat.
My own family had been using my pregnant wife as their maid.
Emily pulled back, embarrassed by her own tears.
“Your mom says I’m a freeloader,” she whispered. “Your sisters say you work yourself into the ground while I sit around pretending to be sick.”
My throat tightened.
“You are carrying our son.”
“She says she carried four kids and never complained.”
“Emily.”
“I just wanted them to like me,” she said. “I thought if I helped enough, maybe they would stop saying I trapped you.”
The words landed harder than any punch.
Trapped me.
The woman who packed my lunch at five in the morning even when her ankles were swollen.
The woman who stretched every grocery dollar until it begged for mercy.
The woman who apologized when she needed to sit down.
I looked at the sink.
Grease floating in cold water.
Plates stacked high.
A pan she should never have been standing long enough to scrub.
“Did they make you do this every night?”
Emily wiped her face.
“Not every night.”
I waited.
She lowered her eyes.
“Most nights.”
A plate slipped from the counter before I could catch it.
It shattered across the floor.
Emily gasped and grabbed her stomach.
Her knees bent slightly.
I caught her before she fell.
From the living room, the laughter continued.
Nobody came.
Nobody asked if she was okay.
Nobody even lowered the volume.
I looked down at my wife, trembling in my arms, then toward the family I had been carrying for years.
And something inside me became very still.
May you like
This night was not going to end with an apology.
It was going to end with consequences.
