After My Miscarriage, My Husband Locked Me Out novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: The Soup

Shelby texted me on Wednesday: "Please, can we talk? Just us. I'll buy."

I read it standing at Roz's kitchen counter, while her daughter ate cereal and pretended not to look.

"Don't go," Roz said.

"I want to hear what she says to my face."

"That's a terrible reason."

"It's the only one I have."

The coffee shop was three blocks from the hospital, and Shelby was already there, at a table by the window.

She stood up when I came in.

She wore the camel coat from the casseroles and no makeup, and her eyes were pink.

"Hannah." She held out both hands, and then she lowered them because I did not take them. "Thank you for coming. I brought you something."

She pushed a thermos across the table.

"Chicken and rice. It's the one you liked."

"You brought me soup."

"I didn't know what else to do."

It was the same thermos she had carried up my porch steps in September.

I did not touch it.

"Sit down, Shelby."

She sat and put her hands in her lap, and then on the table, and then in her lap again.

Her phone lit up beside her cup.

She glanced at it, turned it face down and said, "I never meant for any of this."

"Which part? The seventeen weeks?"

Her mouth trembled.

"He told me in March that you two were already over," she said. "He said you slept in different rooms and had a deal until the lease on the house ran out."

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