She kept talking.
She told me about the baby I'd lost. How Lionel had slipped something into my soup.
She told me that in Lionel's mind, only Fay Simmons was fit to be the mother of his children.
I went still. My hand drifted down to the scar on my stomach.
She had been a girl. Five months along.
Lionel had been just as excited as I was. We'd set up the nursery together.
He'd even hand-washed the baby's clothes himself, one piece at a time.
The night I was rushed to the hospital, he held me and shook with sobs.
He was clearly devastated, but he forced himself to stay strong for me. "We'll have another baby. We will."
We clung to each other in that hospital room and wept.
Late into the night, in that dim ward, we suffered together.
Fay watched me break down, and the look on her face was pure, undisguised triumph.
She pulled my hand onto the swell of her belly and laughed, open and shameless.
"Everything you begged for and couldn't have, I got without even trying."
I crumpled to the floor, too weak to stand. I couldn't tell if the pain was my heart or my stomach.
Fay pressed the toe of her shoe into my kneecap and sneered.
"Moira, you're even more pathetic than I imagined."