Chapter 2
I waited until Mark fell asleep before I opened the account again.
His breathing had gone slow and steady.
One hand rested near my pillow. If I moved my shoulder even slightly, I could have touched him.
I didn't.
I turned my phone brightness all the way down and started reading.
The first post was about my mother.
Mark had written about the week after her funeral.
I stopped answering calls.
I sat on the bathroom floor for so long that I couldn't make myself stand up and shower.
He called it:
"Another emotional shutdown."
The comments called me dramatic.
The next post was about our sex life.
Of course, he hadn't included enough to identify me directly.
No name.
No address.
No photograph.
He had only written that after my miscarriage, I went months without wanting to be touched.
Only that one night I asked him:
"Do you still think I'm beautiful?"
Only that I cried afterward because I hated what the miscarriage had done to my body, and I hated even more that I cared so much.
I closed the post and covered my mouth with my hand.
One thought kept circling through my head.
I told him those things because he was my husband.
Because he was my husband.
The next morning, he poured coffee into my favorite mug.
"You look tired."
"I didn't sleep well."
His hand brushed the back of my neck.
"Want me to make dinner tonight?"
His voice was still warm.
Still familiar.
For one second, I almost wished he would become openly cruel.
I wanted him to smirk.
Hide his phone.
Do something so obviously wrong that I could simply hate him.
Instead, he leaned down and kissed my temple.
That hurt more.
At lunch, I opened the account again.
Five years was too much to read post by post.
So I searched for words that belonged to my life.
"Mom."
"Miscarriage."
"Birthday."
"Body."
"Lucy."
Each search felt like opening a room I had never known strangers were standing inside.
One post was about finding my first gray hair at thirty-eight.
I had laughed when I showed Mark.
That night, I admitted I was actually scared of getting older. I just didn't want Lucy to know.
Another post was about the weight I gained afterward and how I stopped looking at myself in the mirror.
Then I found one about something I had once confessed to Mark:
I was afraid Lucy liked him more.
He was the easy parent.
I was the one who remembered homework, dentist appointments, curfews, and rules.
Someone had commented:
"Maybe your daughter likes her dad more because her dad actually likes her."
I stared at that sentence for a long time.
That evening, Mark took my bag when I walked through the door.
"Tough day?"
"Something like that."
He kissed me and asked if I wanted a glass of wine.
I watched his hands move around the kitchen.
Those hands had held me through the worst moments of my life.
Now I knew they had also typed those moments out for strangers.
That night, after he fell asleep, I searched one final word.
"Baby."
A post from four years earlier appeared.
I knew the date before I opened it.
The night I miscarried.
I had cried until I could barely breathe.
Mark had held me until exhaustion finally dragged me to sleep.
The post began:
"My wife lost our baby tonight, but somehow I'm still the one holding everything together."
I looked at the timestamp.
"2:14 A.M."
I remembered the clock beside our bed.
A few minutes after two, I had fallen asleep against his chest.
Mark hadn't even waited for my tears to dry.