“She always said, no matter how mad we got, we should never use the d–word. She said her own parents divorced on impulse, and she grew up without a dad. She’d never let her daughters miss out on that.”
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Jake panicked. He thought I was just trying to scare him, but this was real. He’d done something terrible.
Jake immediately pulled out his phone to call
me, but found I’d blocked his number. Same with texts, Facebook, everything.
“She’s serious?”
My mom’s fingers were trembling. “No way…
We gotta get her back, quick!”
“Tiffany, honey, can you get yourself home? We gotta go find Ashley.”
Tiffany’s jaw dropped. She held up her freshly
manicured hand. “But… my nails! I can’t drive.”
My mom waved her off. “Call a Lyft, then.”
Tiffany was stunned. She couldn’t believe she
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was being ditched like this. She glared at Jake,
but he was frantically flipping through his
contacts, trying to find someone who could
reach me. He barely knew my friends.
Jake drove my mom back to her place first, but
the house was empty. All that was left was a blood stain on the floor.
“Wait, Tiffany didn’t lose enough blood for that,
did she?” My mom was puzzled.
Jake suddenly slapped his forehead. “Ashley!
She was bleeding at home… She had a miscarriage!”
My mom’s face went white. She almost collapsed. “I hit her… I hit her!”
“No wonder she wants nothing to do with me!” My mom tried calling me again, but I’d blocked her too. She sank to the floor, completely lost.
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Jake didn’t have time for my mom’s meltdown. He needed to get back to our place.
Two hours later, Jake walked through the front door, but the house was still empty. What was he going to do? He felt a sharp pang in his chest, and tears started streaming down his face. This was the first time he felt so empty, so empty. He never realized how much he cared.
Before, when I was around, he would always compare me to Tiffany and think I fell short. He treated me with indifference. But now he was terrified, scared that I was really gone. All those years he had slowly grown to love me, and now, he lost me. He had treated me like nothing,
when in reality, I was his other half, his soulmate.
A little while later, my mom called Jake. “Jake, I
called the cops!”
Sarah had taken me to a post–partum recovery
center. “Miscarriages take a toll. You need to
rest and heal.” Without waiting for me to
protest, Sarah paid for a week of care.
The center offered everything you needed to
recuperate, and someone could even watch my
daughter.
I had just finished an exam when the cops
called me and I picked up. “Officer, I’m not
missing. I just don’t want to go home. No need
to waste public resources.”
Jake was practically screaming on the other
end of the line. “Honey, where are you? I’ll
come get you.”
I said flatly, “No thanks. I’m not coming back to
serve you guys.”
Jake pleaded, “Honey, I’m sorry! I didn’t know
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you had a miscarriage. You must be feeling awful, both physically and emotionally. I’m so sorry!”
“Come home, please. I’ll take care of you.”
I laughed coldly. “What a joke. Take care of me? Did you take care of me when I was pregnant with our first kid? All you do is talk.”
“You’ve never changed a single diaper. The only time you tried to make our daughter a bottle, you scalded her!”
