While I Was Losing Ours, He Took My Place

Synopsis

My husband handed me his phone whenever there were cameras in a room. It was on the cistern when I locked myself in the ladies' stall, twelve weeks pregnant, losing the baby. The screen lit with an ultrasound from Serena, his first love. Under it, one line: "Don't tell her yet, I'll handle my wife after the speeches." I was the wife to be handled. Two hundred guests were toasting his parents' anniversary. None of them knew. The heartbeat had stopped during the soup. I had smiled through the cramps, blamed the wine. I took my own phone from my clutch and typed. His shoes stopped under the stall door, and he knocked, kind, to ask if I was ready for the family photograph.-