Seattle's rainy season felt endless.
I was in the hospital for a threatened miscarriage.
That same day, my husband Griffin Montgomery's phone blew up with over a hundred missed calls.
They were all from Briar. An intern at his company, a girl who claimed to have severe anxiety and suicidal tendencies.
As the phone buzzed nonstop, I weakly asked if he needed to call her back. He shot back, irritated, "Just ignore it. She'll only keep calling. Doesn't she have parents? God, this is so annoying."
However, a mere ten minutes later, the girl posted a photo of herself in a white dress on Instagram.
She was standing on the ledge of the Kerry Park observation deck.
The caption read: "If I fall from here, will I become the wind? Maybe then, people won't hate me anymore."
Griffin glanced at it and let out a derisive sneer. "Become the wind? What kind of melodramatic teen drama is she starring in?"
But his restlessness betrayed him. He paced the hospital room for the next hour, a caged animal, before finally snatching his car keys and rushing out, tossing over his shoulder, "I'm going to check on her. I'll be right back."
That night, I started hemorrhaging and was rushed into the emergency room.
When the doctor asked if they should do everything they could to save the fetus, I glanced at the empty spot beside me and answered quietly, "No. Let him go."
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1
When the anesthesia wore off and I woke up, it was the next afternoon. Outside the window, Seattle's signature gloom lingered.
I raised a hand, stroking my flat abdomen. The motion made the sleeve of my hospital gown slip down, revealing the back of my hand—a mottled mess of bruises and needle marks.
I had always been terrified of needles, but to save our child, I had endured every kind of injection to prevent the miscarriage.
Yet in the twenty-seven hours since I’d been wheeled into the operating room, Griffin had been a ghost.
As if on cue, the phone on my bedside table lit up.
It was a message from Griffin, but not about me or the baby. It was a short text: "Briar was out in the cold too long last night and had a severe anxiety attack. Her parents aren't in Washington and her good-for-nothing brother doesn't care about her, so I had to stay with her at the ER for observation. She's such a handful."
Though he called her a handful, his tone held a note of fondness he probably didn't even hear in his own voice.
I stared at the message and replied, "Got it."
Then, I opened Instagram.
Briar had posted a new update with the caption: "My knight."
In the corner of her selfie, a man's hand was captured in the frame, gently tucking the corner of her blanket.
I recognized it instantly. It was Griffin's hand.
Ironically, the ring finger where his wedding band should have been was bare, marked only by a faint indentation.
A bitter smile twisted my lips. I changed my profile picture to a solid black square and commented on her post with a prayer hands emoji.
Less than a minute later, the comment was deleted. My phone rang. It was Griffin.
"Rowan, what the hell was that? I already told you Briar doesn't have family here to take care of her. She's sick. I'm just looking after her as her boss, doing my duty. Besides, she's pitiful enough as it is. Can you not be so passive-aggressive at a time like this?"
Pitiful. That was Griffin's favorite word for her.
When that girl first joined the company, she couldn't even figure out the coffee machine. She was clumsy and constantly attached to his hip, pestering him with questions.
He used to share amusing anecdotes from work, but somewhere along the way, she became the star of all of them.
