Got rid of that child.
The room contracts, and I am nineteen years old again at a campus party in a house I didn't know, with a boy whose name I never asked.
I went there determined to lose my virginity because I was tired of being the only girl in my dorm who hadn't. I chose a stranger because he was tall and his hands were warm when he handed me a drink and he didn't ask me stupid questions.
We went upstairs. It was quick. It hurt less than I expected.
I slipped out before he woke up and never planned to see him again.
I don't even remember his face. I've tried — in waiting rooms, in the shower, in the dark hours between midnight and four when my brain cycles through every wrong door I've ever walked through — and I can't find it.
What I remember is a birthmark between his shoulder blades: a dark, uneven mark shaped like a spilled drop of ink that someone had tried to wipe away.
I touched it while he slept. That's the last thing I did before I left.
Six weeks later, a pregnancy test told me what I thought was impossible. You can't get pregnant your first time — the lie every eighteen-year-old believes until the two pink lines make a liar out of her.
I never found him.
I was too scared to tell my grandparents — Pop with his heart condition, Nana with her church friends and her faith in me. So I went to a clinic alone on a Tuesday morning, signed forms, and let them take it.
I was in the small percentage who had complications afterward. Scarring and damage that doctors explained with diagrams and careful language and a sentence that starts with "This may affect your ability to..."
Three miscarriages later, I know exactly what it affected.
And Gary knows. He's known since before we married — I told him because I believed honesty was the foundation of a life together. He held my face in his hands and said it didn't matter.
Now he's using it to cut me.
He must see something in my face — whatever color has drained from it, whatever expression has replaced the defiance — because his posture shifts. The menace softens. His shoulders drop a fraction.
"Look, Waverly." His voice gentles. "I shouldn't have said that. We're both upset. Let's talk about this tomorrow."
This voice is the preamble, I know that.
He once whispered "I love you" so gently into my hair that I relaxed against his chest. Seconds after that his grip tightened around the back of my neck and he steered me out of a restaurant because I'd laughed too long at the waiter's joke.
I cross the room to the closet. My suitcase is on the top shelf — a grey hard-shell I bought for our honeymoon. I pull it down and throw it on the bed.
"There's nothing to talk about." I open the suitcase and start pulling clothes from hangers. My hands are steady and I don't even know how. "I'm leaving."
"Waverly, come on…"
"Feel free to stay here with Tegan." I fold a blouse without looking at it. The fabric is cool and slippery and impossible to fold neatly but I do it anyway because my hands need a task or they'll start shaking. "I'm sure she'll be thrilled."
"You're not being rational." He takes a step closer and his voice is gentle — the one that used to work. I can hear the effort in it, the gears turning. "Put the suitcase away, please. We'll figure this out."
"You hit me in front of four hundred people and then used my abortion history to hurt me." I place a pair of shoes sole-down against the suitcase wall. "We're past figuring it out."
He goes quiet and I can feel him recalculating behind me — the silence has a different texture when Gary is scared.
He's never seen me pack a bag. In eight years, I've never gotten this far. I've yelled, I've cried, I've locked myself in the bathroom. But I've never put clothes in a suitcase.
This is new territory for both of us.
I turn my back to him and reach for the dresser drawer. Every nerve in my spine objects. My body knows what happens when I stop watching him. But I make myself do it, because if I can't turn my back on Gary in a hotel room, I will never turn my back on him at all.
I hear his footsteps on the carpet — soft and absorbed by the pile. My hands freeze inside the drawer. The cotton of a folded shirt presses against my knuckles. Then a sound I can't place. A sharp, dry snap, like a twig breaking.
I spin around.
Gary is standing by the desk holding my cell phone in one hand. On the floor, the hotel phone cord lies severed — he's ripped it somehow. The phone itself sits on the desk, useless.
The distance between us registers like a measurement I should have been tracking. Twelve feet. Maybe fifteen. The room is enormous, and I am on the wrong side of it.
I should have known. The gentleness was never retreat.
"Gary." My voice comes out small. "What are you doing?"
He doesn't answer. He picks up my key card from the entry table — a smooth motion, like he planned the sequence before I turned around — and reaches for the door handle.
The door opens outward. Into the hallway. Away from me.
I run. My heels catch in the carpet and I stumble, grab the edge of the bed, push off. The duvet is slick under my palm and my fingers can't find a grip. The silk blouse I just folded slides to the floor. Twelve feet has never felt so far.
He steps through the door. I see the hallway light — a thin bright bar that narrows as the door swings shut.
"Gary, don't—"
The door closes, and the latch clicks. The electronic lock beeps once — a small, polite sound that seals me inside a room with no phone, no key, and no way out.
I slam my palms against the door. The surface is smooth and cold and doesn't give.
"Open this door." My voice is loud now. It fills the suite and bounces off the marble bathroom and comes back to me empty. "Open it, Gary, or you'll regret this."
His laugh comes through the door — muffled, close, his mouth must be inches from the other side.
"You shouldn't have behaved that way, Waverly." His voice is calm and patient. He sounds like he has restored order. "When I get back, I'll remind you of your place."
His footsteps fade down the hallway. I press my forehead against the door and stand there listening until the last sound disappears and there is nothing left.
"I'm getting us out of here," I say to the quiet, my palm pressing flat against my stomach. "I promise you that."