"The Room That Stayed Quiet"

The nursery door stayed shut.

After the miscarriage, everything blurred. I still found myself waking at 3 a.m., my body clinging to the rhythm of a baby that never came home. The silence was unbearable. It screamed in the space where soft cries and lullabies were meant to live. The walls, painted in soft lilac, now felt like tombstones for dreams that never got to breathe.

I changed.

Grief made me quieter. It stole my light. I moved slower, breathed shallower, lived less. And William—he changed too, but not in the way I hoped. He grew distant. Cold. He began to treat me like glass he didn’t care to handle. At first, it was subtle: late nights, avoiding my gaze, sleeping on the edge of the bed like he might fall off the world.

Then one night, I heard laughter.

A woman’s laugh. High-pitched. Carefree. Foreign. It spilled from our kitchen like poison.

I crept halfway down the stairs and saw them—William and a woman with perfect red lips, her legs tucked under her on my favorite chair. She giggled, tracing her finger along his collarbone like she belonged in that moment. Like I didn’t exist.

I didn't scream. I didn't cry. I just turned back into the quiet room, the one with the untouched crib and folded onesies. I sat down and held the little blanket I had sewn during those hopeful months, the one with embroidered stars and his last name stitched at the corner.

He had lost interest in me the moment I lost our child.

But the next morning, everything boiled over.

I walked downstairs in an old hoodie, barefoot, just wanting a bowl of cereal to settle the nausea that still clung to my mornings. And there they were—again. This time more brazen.

He had her pressed against the kitchen counter. His hands were on her hips. Her fingers were buried in his hair.

They didn’t notice me at first.

Then she turned her head, locked eyes with me, and smirked.

“Oh,” she said, voice dripping with venom. “Is this the one who couldn’t even keep a baby in her stomach?”

William didn’t say a word. Not to her. Not to me.