Chapter 7
The baby shower photographs disappeared from the family website.
Emily requested it.
Not because bruises were visible.
Because she did not want photographs of herself smiling beside Ryan preserved as proof everything had been fine.
I understood.
But she kept one.
A candid photograph taken twenty minutes before the shawl came off.
Emily seated.
Ryan beside her.
Linda behind them.
Emily’s hand resting protectively over her stomach.
Why keep that?
She looked at it.
“I want to remember I knew.”
Interesting.
In the photograph, she was smiling.
But now she could see her other hand gripping the chair.
Ready.
Waiting for me to come from the council room.
She had already decided to leave.
The image was not evidence she was happy.
It was evidence she had a plan.
I liked that distinction.
Ryan sent letters.
Flowers.
Then silence.
Then another letter.
Emily eventually read one.
Not because I encouraged it.
Her choice.
He wrote:
I never thought of myself as a man who hurts women.
She laughed bitterly.
Then kept reading.
That was the problem.
Identity first.
Behavior second.
He described stress.
Fear of becoming a father.
Feeling judged by me.
None of those placed his hand on Emily.
Eventually he wrote:
I kept waiting for the fact that I loved you to cancel what I did when I was angry.
Better.
Emily stopped there.
May you like
She did not answer.
Not yet.
