I was seven months pregnant when my husband raised my late father’s walking cane and swung it down onto my arm with all the hatred a man can muster.
The shock of it still echoes inside me like a church bell that won’t stop ringing.
This happened on a warm October afternoon in our little house on Magnolia Street in Savannah, Georgia.
The sun was pouring through the lace curtains my grandmother had stitched with her own hands, and a breeze carried the scent of magnolias from the garden.
I had spent the day making his favorite meatloaf, so certain that a good meal and a soft smile might bring back the man I married.
My name is Margaret Collins, but everyone calls me Maggie.
I was carrying our first child, a little boy we were going to name Henry after my father.
Every time the baby kicked, I felt a tiny flutter of hope that Edward might still be the husband who once held my hand and whispered prayers over my belly every night.
But those days were long gone.
Edward had grown cold and distant, his eyes always glued to his phone, his voice sharp as broken glass whenever I asked a simple question.
He started coming home late, drenched in a perfume so cloying and cheap that it made my stomach turn.
I wanted to believe it was just stress from his job at the shipping yard, that soon he would come back to me.
Deep in my soul, however, I knew there was another woman.
I had overheard rumors at the church social, whispers that sliced through me like a knife: “That Collins man has been seen with a young redhead out on Tybee Island.”
I prayed every morning for the strength to forgive, for the sake of my unborn son.
I told myself that love was about patience, about turning the other cheek.
My mother raised me to believe that a wife’s duty was to keep the home together, no matter how heavy the cross.
So I kept my silence and poured my sorrow into polishing his boots and ironing his shirts.
I remember the first time I found a smear of coral lipstick on his collar, a shade I had never worn in my life.
He said it was from a waitress who bumped into him.
I swallowed the hurt and scrubbed the stain until my knuckles were raw, convincing myself it was nothing.
Then there were the late-night phone calls he would take outside, his voice low and honeyed, a tone he had not used with me in years.
My neighbor, Mrs. Patterson, a kindly widow who watched the street like a hawk, came by one day for tea.
She patted my hand and said with a heavy sigh, “Maggie dear, I don’t wish to be the bearer of gossip, but a red sports car has been parking around the corner when your husband comes home. A young redhead gets out and walks off.”
I nearly dropped my teacup.
Still, I clutched my belly and told her it must be a coworker.
But that night, I wept into my pillow while Edward snored beside me, dreaming, I am sure, of someone else.
That afternoon, the fateful one, I was determined to try one last time to reach his heart.
I made his mother’s meatloaf recipe, the one he swore no one could replicate.
I wore my nicest maternity dress, a soft blue cotton that matched my eyes, and I fluffed my hair, which had gone dull from months of worry.
The baby kicked vigorously as I set the table, and I whispered, “It’s alright, little Henry. Daddy will come home and everything will be fine.”
But deep inside, a dread curled like smoke in my chest.
I
