"Are you saying your husband raped you?"
A beat of dead silence—then someone snorted.
The laughter spread like wildfire, rippling through the ward and into the hallway.
"She says her husband raped her..."
"Oh my God, she's completely lost it..."
"Rape? Between a married couple? That's hilarious."
"Poor thing. The trauma's finally broken her mind."
Arnold's face flushed crimson, then drained to a sickly gray-white.
"Meryl!"
The veins in his neck bulged as he lost control.
"Do you even hear yourself?! We're married! Legally married! That night I just had a few drinks, I was in the mood, and I wanted to be intimate with my own wife—what's wrong with that?! How is that rape?! You're my wife! If I want to sleep with you, that's my goddamn right!"
"You've completely lost your mind!"
I looked at him, my voice ice-cold.
"You're telling me you didn't calculate the timing? You got me pregnant on that exact day so the baby would be born today."
"If that's not premeditation, what is?!"
"Bullshit!"
Arnold finally snapped.
The gentle, refined mask he always wore shattered completely. He was unrecognizable.
"When your first three babies died, I didn't even know you! Are you saying I killed those three too?! Huh?!"
"What—I spent years scheming to get close to you, begged to marry you, all so I could murder your children? For what?! Am I insane?!"
"Divorce! We're getting divorced! I must've been cursed in eight past lives to marry a jinx like you! You kill your own babies and then accuse your husband and mother of being murderers! Psycho! You're a complete and utter psycho!"
His rebuttal rang with conviction. He looked like he might actually cry.
The people around me stared with a mix of pity and disbelief.
And then—Mom had actually called in a psychiatrist.
"Dr. Lawrence! Dr. Lawrence, please examine my daughter! She just lost her baby, she's traumatized, she's spouting nonsense—accusing people of murder, accusing people of rape!"
"She must be schizophrenic! Check her, please—does she need a sedative? Should she be committed? We can't let her keep making a scene!"
"Just give her a shot to calm her down!"
But watching how desperately Mom wanted me silenced...
It only made me more certain I was right.
"Mom, you're awfully eager to shut me up."
"You're scared, aren't you?"
"Scared everyone will find out that the graves of my three dead babies—"
"—are empty."
