Her voice trembled as she spoke.
“My husband doesn’t know. I never told him. He’s powerful. He’d leave me if he found out I had a child before him.”
I wanted to scream, to fall at her feet and beg her to just look at me. To tell me I mattered. To say she was sorry, or glad, or anything.
But she was terrified.
Not cruel. Not angry. Just… paralyzed by fear.
So I did the only thing I knew how to do.
I nodded.
And I walked away.
That kind of silence—when it fills your chest and settles in your bones—it changes you. It doesn’t echo. It lingers.
A Year of Trying to Forget
