Things We Didn't Say - By Kristina Riggle Page 0,69

my old childhood room, with a child in the crook of each arm.

The next morning I got that call from Mallory, and I knew I’d have to go home.

Chapter 30

Mallory, 2000

I woke with my limbs shaky and my tongue tasting like paste.

My anger spent, the house now rang with emptiness like a struck gong.

He’d done it. He really had left me.

I’d been expecting it, really, from the first moment we’d met. At every milestone I found myself more surprised he hadn’t bolted, and more afraid of how much I needed him not to.

Because that meant when he finally did, I’d be destroyed.

I pulled myself upright in the double bed.

I hadn’t meant to throw anything, certainly hadn’t meant to hit him with it. He was belittling me, just like they all did, my whole life, only from him it wasn’t supposed to happen. That wasn’t part of the script. He was good, the others were bad.

I couldn’t process it, him joining them.

But he did. He belittled me, and when I got angry he ran away and took my babies and I was alone once again.

When this happened as a teenager, when they abandoned and shunned me, I had a solution. Temporary it was, and a poor substitute, but it would obliterate everything else for the time being, and that worked well enough.

But I was old now, my body softer, stretched and marked by two pregnancies. Finding a random screw would not be so easy, these days.

Speaking of my body, I needed to pee. And, despite it all, I was hungry. And thirsty.

Rising from the bed was like peeling apart strong magnets, but I did it. I pulled myself along the wall to the bathroom.

I was searching for another roll of toilet paper under the sink when I saw something that reminded me why I might have felt so unstable yesterday. Oh, yes. Over five weeks since I’d last needed a tampon.

I replaced the toilet paper and then dug in the bathroom drawer, where I kept all my “feminine supplies,” as Michael called them.

I could hardly keep my hand still, and splashed myself with urine. I set the stick on the sink and did not look at it as I scrubbed my hands clean.

I looked back and saw it clearly: two lines.

I clutched it to my chest, sobbing now with relief.

Even when I’d asked my ob-gyn to take out the IUD, I hadn’t really believed I’d conceive again. For one thing, me and Michael barely made love anymore, and I certainly didn’t deserve a third baby. But it was an effort worth making, I thought, in case it was meant to be, in case this time I could get it right.

I never got around to having that conversation with Michael. I definitely had never expected such rapid success. I wasn’t so young anymore, after all.

I brought the stick in the kitchen with me as I dialed the Turner home, knowing that must be where Michael had gone. I stared at the stick like I was afraid the second line would vanish if I blinked.

Michael’s voice was tight and hard when he picked up. He objected when I told him the news, kept saying, “That’s impossible!” and “I thought you had an IUD?”

I’ll go to the doctor today, I told him, and I’ll find out. And I’m sorry, I told him, I’m so sorry you’re hurt.

So very, very sorry, and it’s so lonely here, I told him. I can’t be alone, I said. I just can’t be, not now. Please come home to me. I beg you.

I would tell him later that the IUD had gotten dislodged, skewed, and that my obstetrician removed it that very day I first came in, and what a miracle, but the embryo was unharmed.

When Michael came back home with the children, I was brimming over with apologies and joy and new potential baby names.

And I believed, then, it would all be okay.

Chapter 31

Casey

I gasp myself awake, as if an alarm bell is clanging in my chest.

I squint at the clock. Midnight.

I leap out of bed, and tiny dots of light swarm into my vision. I sink slowly back to the edge of the bed. I’ve been asleep since dinner, leaving the kids and Mallory unattended. Michael didn’t say I had to keep watch like a jailer, but I know he expects me to make sure everything is okay, and I can’t let him down.

I listen at each child’s door, approaching Dylan’s door out of habit, even, but