After My Miscarriage, My Husband Locked Me Out novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Locked Out
Audrey comes home from the hospital after losing the baby and finds her husband holding the door shut for a party for his dead friend's widow; the receipt shows he planned it while she lay in the hospital, and she asks her sister for a suitcase. For his things.
I came home from the hospital still wearing my plastic wristband, and my husband stood in the doorway and would not let me in.
Leah's car idled at the curb behind me.
I had a pharmacy bag in one hand and a hospital discharge sheet folded in my pocket.
Hoyt kept one palm flat on the door, holding it open about a foot.
Behind him, glasses clinked and somebody laughed.
"Leah's still here," he said, looking past me at my sister's car. "Can you stay at her place tonight?"
I had texted him from the hospital that I was on my way.
I had spent the whole drive picturing my own bed.
"Why?" I asked.
"It's just not a good night."
A little boy called from inside the house.
"Hoyt! Can I have the piece with the moon?"
Over Hoyt's shoulder I could see a banner strung across my living room.
WELCOME HOME, DANIELLE & OTTO.
Danielle was the widow of Hoyt's best friend.
Two weeks ago her lease ended, and I had told her she and her six-year-old could use our guest room until she found something else.
Now there were balloons tied to my mother's dining chairs.
"You're having a party," I said.
"A few friends brought dinner. Danielle needed help settling in."
"Today?"
He rubbed the back of his neck and glanced over his shoulder.
"Keep your voice down, Audrey."
I hadn't known it was loud.
My throat hurt.
"Our baby died this morning," I said.
His eyes dropped to the band on my wrist.
"I know. But if you walk in looking like this, she'll think you blame her for me not being there."
He had been at the hospital for one hour that morning.
He had stood at the end of my bed while the doctor talked, and then he had left to meet a moving van.
Leah had held my hand for the rest of it.
"I owe her, Audrey," he said quietly. "You don't know what I owe her."
I didn't know what to say to that, so I said nothing.
This was my house.
My mother had left it to me three years before I married him.
I had opened this door to Danielle myself and carried clean towels up to her room.
"Move," I said.
"Audrey."
"Let me into my own house."
He stepped aside.
I walked in slowly, because it hurt low in my stomach.
The dining table was covered in casserole dishes and wineglasses and the good plates I had set out for our gender-reveal lunch.
Then I saw the cake.
White frosting, tiny gold stars, and a sugar crescent moon sitting on top.
I had asked for that moon because my mother used to call me her moonbeam.
It was the cake I ordered for our baby.
The pink and blue lettering was gone.
Fresh green icing covered the spot where it had been.
WELCOME HOME, DANIELLE & OTTO.
Hoyt followed my eyes.
"Here," he said, and reached for the pharmacy bag. "Let me take that."
I turned and put the bag in Leah's hand instead.
Danielle stood up from the end of the table in a cream cardigan, a glass in her hand.
"Oh, Audrey," she said softly. "I'm so sorry. We can go."
She didn't go.
She stayed beside her chair and watched Hoyt.
"Nobody's asking you to leave," he told her.
I climbed the stairs with Leah's arm around me.
My bedroom door was open.
Danielle's phone was charging beside my lamp, and her sweater lay across my pillow.
I picked the sweater up and held it out to Hoyt, who had followed me.
"She's sleeping in our bed?"
"The bathroom's closer for Otto. He wakes up scared." He took the sweater. "I've been downstairs."
Through the bathroom door I could see a small blue toothbrush in our cup.
Leah pulled out my dressing table chair and I sat.
"The guest room's made up," Hoyt said. "You can take that tonight."
Leah went still.
"Why would I sleep in the guest room?"
"Otto's finally settled. Moving him again will upset him."
"This is my bed, Hoyt."
"It's one night."
"Then they can sleep in the guest room."
He opened his mouth, but Leah had already packed my pajamas and my charger from the drawer where he had put them, and she was helping me up.
At her house she turned down the covers and set a glass of water on the nightstand.
My phone buzzed with an email from the bakery.
It was a receipt for today's order.
Under the original gender-reveal wording was a request to change the lettering, and the name on the request was Hoyt Pelham.
Confirmed at 9:01 that morning.
I opened our messages.
At 8:14 I had written: We lost the baby. Please come back.
At 8:19 he had answered: Leah's coming. I'll call you shortly.
I had kept the phone on my blanket so I wouldn't miss his call.
He had spent that time changing a cake.
I took screenshots of both and saved them in the same folder.
Then I looked up the number Leah had given me for a family lawyer, and I wrote to her.
I wrote that I wanted to end a living arrangement in a house I owned, and that I wanted to separate from my husband.
I pressed send before I could read it twice.
Leah sat on the end of the bed.
"What do you need?"
"A suitcase," I said. "Your big one."
"For your things?"
My pajamas lay folded on her chair. Everything else I owned was still in my house.
"No," I said. "For his."
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