Page 6 of Devoured
The second miscarriage came eight months later. He didn’t come to the hospital.
The last time, I sat in a hospital gown that didn’t close in the back, dried blood still caking my inner thighs. He stood in the doorway, checking his phone.
“Three strikes,”he said, not even looking up. “You can’t even do the one thing women are supposed to do.”
I stopped thinking about education or a future after that. There was no point in dreaming when I couldn’t even perform the basic function of being a wife. I was exactly what Theo said I was—broken, useless, worthless.
He could have divorced me, but his mother would never forgive him. “The Quinns don’t divorce,”she’d said at once, at a family dinner when Theo told her about a friend of his divorcing his wife, completely oblivious to how her son looked at me like something stuck to his shoe.
Besides, Theo liked owning things. Even broken things. Especially broken things he could blame for his unhappiness.
We could have tried again for a baby. The doctors said there was no reason we couldn’t. But Theo had already decided I was defective, and that gave him permission to find what he wanted elsewhere.
The first lipstick stain showed up four weeks after the last miscarriage. Coral pink on his collar, nothing like the nude shades I wore. Then came the hotel receipts. The late-night texts he didn’t bother to hide. Different women sending pictures, making promises, arranging afternoon meetings.
He left the evidence where I’d find it, like a cat leaving dead birds on the doorstep.
One night, I’d had enough. The words came out before I could stop them. “I want a divorce.”
He heard me loud and clear but didn’t answer. Didn’t even frown. Just stepped forward and hit me so fast I didn’t process the movement until I was already falling.
I didn’t hit the ground. I caught myself against the wall. The plaster cracked where my shoulder landed. Then he hit me again.
And that was just the start.
From that night on, he only needed an excuse. A towel on the floor. A look he didn’t like. Silence when he wanted to talk.
Summer came and I wore sweaters in ninety-degree heat. Covered the bruises with makeup two shades too light that fooled no one.
My neighbors stopped meeting my eye.
Annie stopped calling after I made too many excuses for missing Sunday dinners.
Mr. Kurt would text me sometimes, asking if I was okay, if I needed anything. I always said I was fine. Eventually, he stopped asking too.
And still, I stayed. Seven years of this. Seven years of covering bruises and making excuses.
Until August 2024. My thirty-sixth birthday. I woke up with a black eye because the previous night’s dinner wasn’t to Theo’s liking.
I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror and something just... changed. I don’t know where the courage came from. I told myself that I was a grown-ass woman, and I had to—I needed to stop taking his shit and get my life together!
I’d been planning for days. Skimming grocery money. Checking bus schedules on the library computer.
That evening, while Theo was at a partner’s dinner, I finally did it. Packed a bag with one change of clothes, my birth certificate, two hundred dollars in small bills, and the gold bracelet his mother gave me that I could pawn.
I made it to the bus station. I was just about to get on the bus to anywhere-but-here when a black Lexus pulled up to the curb, I knew it was him before the window came down.
Theo sat behind the wheel, not even looking at me. Just waiting. Like he’d known exactly where I’d be.
“Get in,”he growled.
I had one foot on the bus step. The driver was watching me. Other passengers were shifting in their seats, impatiently. I could’ve just climbed up. Sat down. Gone to Cleveland.
Then Theo smiled. Not big, just that little twist at the corner of his mouth that meant he was done asking.
My legs turned to water. I stepped back down onto the sidewalk and walked to his car like I was sleepwalking. Like my body remembered what happened when I made him wait.
We drove through empty streets. He kept one hand on the wheel, his wedding ring scraping against the leather with each subtle turn. His other hand rested on the gearshift, thumb tapping out some rhythm only he could hear. Waiting.
