I sat upright.
After the baby.
Mark almost never mentioned our daughter.
For twenty-eight years, he had treated the subject like a locked room.
If I cried on her birthday, he grew uncomfortable.
If I wondered what she might have looked like, he told me dwelling on the past was unhealthy.
He had even discouraged me from requesting old hospital records.
“The doctors did everything they could,” he always said.
Now he’d invoked that loss as a threat.
I played the voicemail for Miriam.
She listened carefully.
“Tell me about your daughter.”
I stared at the carpet.
“She was born prematurely in March 1998.”
“What happened?”
“I had a severe hemorrhage during delivery.
I lost consciousness.
When I woke, Mark told me she’d survived seventeen minutes.”
“Did you see her?”
I shook my head.
“He said there were complications.
They’d already taken her away.”
“Was there a funeral?”
