Chapter 4 - MEGAN TELLS ME WHAT I MISSEDMy sister returned after Rebecca left.
She shut the hospital door.
Then:
“I hate all of them.”
“Helpful.”
“I’m serious.”
“I know.”
She sat beside me.
Her eyes were swollen.
We had not yet talked about the baby.
Neither of us could.
Instead she asked:
“When did Olivia start?”
“I don’t know.”
“You suspected?”
“Yes.”
“For how long?”
“Three months.”
Megan stared.
“And you stayed?”
There it was.
The question people think is simple.
I looked at her.
She immediately corrected herself.
“Sorry.”
“No.”
“I shouldn’t—”
“I stayed because suspicion isn’t proof. Because Daniel said I was paranoid. Because we were expecting a baby. Because Evelyn kept saying pregnancy hormones were making me irrational. Pick one.”
Megan looked toward my stomach.
Then away.
“I should have come more.”
“That’s not the issue.”
“What is?”
“I stopped telling you things.”
She nodded.
Why?
Because Megan hated Daniel after he mocked her divorce two years earlier.
Every complaint I made became:
Leave him.
I did not want every marital problem converted into a referendum.
May you like
So I stopped sharing.
Isolation can be self-constructed one reasonable decision at a time.
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