My conscience had been nagging me. She didn’t seem okay when I left. She’d been in the shower, heading to bed a little early. I asked her a few times if she was alright. She said yes, but offered no other information. After four years of marriage, I was pretty good at reading my wife, but this time, I wasn’t getting clear signals.
Or maybe I was and they scared the crap out of me.
My heart was in my boots as I pulled into the driveway. She was probably sleeping, but I’d peek in and make sure she was tucked into bed. When I stopped the truck on the drive and stepped out, something crunched beneath my feet.
I squinted in the early morning light, bent down to look. Glass? A flash of panic raced through me as I jerked my head to check the windows. Had someone broken in? Was Miranda okay?
I turned to take off for the front door when a few huge pieces shifted beneath my feet. I looked down.
Flowers were everywhere.
It was the bouquet I left for her.
My pulse charged into overdrive.
The glass shatter radius had to be thirty feet in all directions. Did this fall somehow? Did she set it on the window sill or something?
I jogged up to the front door and stomped several times on the door mat. When I opened the front door, the sight waiting for me was like a punch to the gut.
Miranda was there, folding laundry into a suitcase. There were multiple suitcases and boxes. Some with clothes. One with books. Her work clothes and apron were on the top of another.
I didn’t have to ask. I knew what she was doing.
She was moving out.
She had thrown those flowers out the window.
This couldn’t be happening.
My tone was clipped. All the anger and frustration I felt for her boiled to the surface. “What are you doing?”
Her response was tear-filled, bitter, broken. “I—I have to go, Jack.”
“Don’t do this.”
“I have to. I can’t breathe here.” She stuffed a shirt into her bag. “I am wasting away—I can’t be here with you and live like strangers.”
My blood boiled. I was so sick of this. So sick of being distant with her. From coming home every night to her anger.We had talked. She told me she needed me to support her while she grieved. And I tried! Literally tried to give her anything she wanted. She tookweeksoff of work. She laid in bed all the time. She was so depressed she rarely ate. She was on medication.
Like what else was I supposed to do?
We had lost three babies.
Even as I had that thought, my intuition kicked me in the gut. There were more. There had to be. She’d have bouts of lying in bed, extra crying, extra anger. Like the past few days. It was why I brought her flowers.
Either she was having hard weeks, or there were more.
I didn’t want to ask “are you having a miscarriage” for fear of triggering her, so I hinted around. Asked a few times if she was okay and took her at her word when she said “yes.”
I suggested a few times that Miranda get on birth control so this wouldn’t keep happening, but she didn’t want to. She said she’d only feel better when she had a baby.
What did I know, anyway?
After the rounds of grief and chaos, things would get better for a while. The ice would thaw and she’d re-achieve some semblance of normal. But then it would blow up all over again. And somehow I was supposed to be the magic man that fixed it all.
To be honest, I was sick of trying to have kids. I just wanted my wife back. I’d be okay—be happy with just her.
I thought she would like hearing me say that. I wasgravelymistaken. In fact, those words may have been the final nail in the coffin of our marriage.
