I almost could have borne the pregnancy.

I almost could have borne the betrayal, the years of friendship turned to ash, the woman who held me at my son’s grave in the morning smiling in my kitchen by afternoon.

What I could not bear, what sent a wave of physical nausea through me so strong I had to put the phone down, was what was visible in the background of her carefully staged photograph, pinned to the refrigerator door just over her shoulder.

Leo’s green dinosaur drawing.

They had not even taken it down.

She had posed for her triumphant little photo of her beautiful second chapter, in my house, with my dead son’s drawing hanging behind her head, and it had not occurred to either of them that there was anything monstrous in that.