The Call My Husband Never Ended

They were at an ultrasound appointment. The same appointment Nolabelle had told me, two weeks earlier, that she was terrified to walk into alone. She had even borrowed forty dollars from me for the co-pay, standing in my kitchen with her hand on her belly, telling me the baby’s father had vanished the day she told him she was pregnant.

I do not remember pulling all the way off the road. I remember the gravel under the tires and the seatbelt cutting into my collarbone and the sound, unmistakable even through a phone speaker, of the two of them kissing.

Out my window the milo fields were turning that dull gold they turn in October, and a hawk sat on the fence post like nothing in the world had changed, and I remember thinking, in the strange sideways way your mind works when it is trying to protect you from what you just heard, that I would need to get gas before I made it all the way home.

“I love you,” Merlin murmured. “We just keep pretending a little while longer. Let her think everything’s fine. Let her help pick out the crib fabric if she wants. Then we disappear.”

The call dropped.

Four minutes. That was all it took to end a marriage, a friendship, and every plan I thought I had for the rest of my life.

My phone buzzed before I had even caught my breath. A text from Merlin: Sorry, meeting ran long at the branch. Picking up supper on the way home. Love you. Then one from Nolabelle, with a heart: Hey Auntie Loman, baby’s kicking up a storm today, can’t wait for you to feel it Sunday.

I sat on that shoulder outside of town, past the sign that says Sweet Springs Welcomes You, and I made a sound I did not know I had in me. When it finally stopped, something cold and very clear took its place. Not grief. Not yet. Something closer to ice water in my veins.