the truth, for once

April 2088. Gwen Palmer is 35. Andreas Tsoukalos is 33.

previously: terrible love // but Gwen miscarried

warnings: miscarriage

You can have everything you deserve if you work hard enough, if you fight for it. The career, the man, the family. Just be smart enough, fierce enough, dedicated enough, sexy enough, and you can have it all.

Except that it’s not true. 

Gwen must have known it wasn’t true or realistic, especially for everyone else. Maybe, deep down, she even knew it wasn’t true for herself. But who cared as long as she was winning? For a long time, she thought she could bend the universe to her will. For a long time, she actually did. 

She should have been ten weeks pregnant and planning her big announcement. Instead, she came home from her doomed appointment to lie in the dark and pass her unviable child alone. She had no one to confide in, no one to comfort her, and she especially couldn’t tell Andreas. She told him she had the flu. He was mad at her—always mad at her these days—but he still brought her NyQuil and chicken soup and took Luisa out of the house so she could sleep. 

He was a good man, and she was going to lose him. 

You see, that was the whole reason for all this mess all along. She didn’t want to lose him, and she felt like she’d been losing him for years. 

So she lay in the dark, not sleeping. She used her sick days at work when she was known to never use sick days. “Are you okay?” her boss asked, probably wondering if it was cancer. 

She could cry freely in this dark room. Andreas didn’t bother her in here. He hadn’t slept in her bed in months. He hadn’t even touched her in just as long. It was a lonely, dark space to grieve their baby—to grieve their entire relationship before either of them had said it was over, to speculate and wonder at what point could she have turned it all around?

If she had asked him first, would he have said yes? Did it matter anymore? The deed was done, and there was no going back. 

For weeks they went about their cold domestic routines, putting up this charade for the sake of their sweet Luisa. Only Gwen knew that with one inevitable truth, this all went away.

It wasn’t supposed to be that way. She wasn’t a bad catch. Plenty of men would be so lucky. She was strong and ambitious, she made a killing in her career, and she fucked like an animal. She was going to make him happy and they’d have another baby and work things out. She just needed more time. She needed an insurance policy. She needed this to not happen.

Oh, why did this have to happen? 

It crossed her mind to try again. A terrible idea, of course. She told herself, Don’t you see how badly that went the first time? It could take a month or two for her cycle to return, and she was older now. She couldn’t get pregnant again soon enough to pass it off as the same. Especially since he wouldn’t even touch her. 

See? Terrible idea. 

But what else could she do?

Maybe tell the damn truth for once in your fucking life.

A novel idea, indeed. But maybe not a terrible one. Andreas was a good man, the kind of man who forgives. Maybe the kind of man who would give her a second chance. 

All he ever wanted from her was honesty. She could give that to him now. 

Or if nothing else, she simply couldn’t drag this out any longer. She was grieving her baby, their baby, and she couldn’t pretend she wasn’t devastated any longer. She needed a friend, a lover, some compassion. It all came to a head one evening, beholding her beautiful fraud of a family. It had to come out. 

“What is it, Gwen?”

She felt, for once, paralyzed by her lack of choices. She was upset, and this time it was genuine. 

“Okay, let me put Luisa to bed,” he said.

—

She was upset, clearly. Andreas helped Luisa through a shortened bedtime routine, and then he gathered his wits in the hallway, trying to decide how much sympathy he owed to someone he didn’t even like. Most days, he was well on his way out. Mentally, at least. Legally, he had preparations in the works and his name on the waiting list for a new apartment. Physically, he’d been advised to maintain a presence in the family home until custody documents could be drawn up. With another baby on the way, she would surely spin that story to make him look like an absolute monster, so he wouldn’t let her tell the courts that he abandoned his family and delicate partner in her time of great need.

Delicate? He could laugh.

But he was interrupted by a sweeter laugh and the bedroom door cracking open. 



“Dadda, up!”

“Back to bed, funny girl.”

He came back to Gwen after putting Luisa down a couple more times, ready for an earful of whatever it was he’d done wrong this time.

“I can’t do this anymore,” she cried. “There’s no point. You never even look at me anymore. Fucking touch me, would you? Don’t you see, there’s nothing here. It’s gone.” 

“What are you talking about?” 

“The baby! It should be the size of a grapefruit by now. ”

She pointed at her stomach, lifting her baggy shirt to reveal its flatness. He hadn’t paid enough attention to her first pregnancy and didn’t remember how big she should have been now. Those early days after Luisa was conceived were a shock, too. But yes, now that she mentioned it, there should have been a bump there by now. He assumed she was carrying something under those baggy shirts, but there was nothing. He didn’t understand. She lied?

“You faked it? How? You were never pregnant, were you?”

“What? You fucking asshole! I’m trying to tell you that our baby died.”

“How can I believe you?”

“You watched me take a test! Here. I have pictures.” She got her phone and found an ultrasound photo, pointing to the cryptic shapes in black and white. “Look! That’s your dead baby. No heartbeat, but look at those arms and legs. I was ten weeks along. That’s big, you know. You could hold it in your hand. And you want to call me a liar? I’ve wanted to tell you this for weeks. I’ve been crying for weeks. Didn’t you even notice? Don’t you care?”


He stared into her furious eyes, but his lips wouldn’t move. 

“Because you’re going to leave me, aren’t you? You were just waiting for something like this. I knew it. I just knew it. Say something.”

She was right. He wanted to leave her more than anything. His head was screaming run, run, run! 

But Luisa. 

But he needed to run. 

“I need to go for a run,” he said. 





He ran until he reached water, until he could go no farther. His phone buzzed with frantic texts from Gwen. He silenced it. Gwen had a way of twisting a situation in circles and making him feel like the asshole. His head was caving in and he couldn’t take any more.  

Her baby died. Hers. He had never agreed to have that baby. 

But a part of him had died, too. Come to think of it, many parts of him had died since they’d been together—his self-respect, his confidence, his spirit, his future. 

But this wasn’t how you run away from her. He did the research. He didn’t want to give her any ammunition. Not a scrap. 

He made a dozen phone calls. It was ten at night, and nobody answered, but he left messages for his lawyer and his new landlady. He didn’t know what to do or where to go. He felt friendless and trapped. He couldn’t go back, but he had nowhere else to go. He sat in the sand and did nothing.

Hours passed, and he must have dozed off while sitting. He woke to the sound of gulls cawing over their morning scraps. It was four o’clock, and the sky started to lighten with an eager spring sunrise. 

He went home and found her asleep on the couch.

She’d been waiting for him, waiting for what came next. It wouldn’t be her decision this time. She seemed to know that. 

“I’m leaving you,” he said. “I’m not leaving Luisa, but I am leaving you.”

“But I wasn’t lying, I swear,” she pleaded. 

He shrugged. “People do this all the time, right? Single parenting. She’ll be fine. I’ve been looking around for a little while. I found a place. It’s a few blocks away, two bedrooms, a nice playground across the street. We’ll shuffle her between.”


“But wait, you can’t end it that quick. I’m sorry, okay? What can I do? I’ve been thinking about trying therapy. I think we could do better. Okay? I could do better.”

He shook his head.

“It’s my birthday this weekend.”

“Gwen, I don’t care anymore. I don’t love you. It’s been a long time since… I don’t know. Maybe I never did.”

It felt like the ugliest, most vicious thing he’d ever said to anyone. He hated the person he’d become. He always considered himself a good man, but maybe that wasn’t true, either. 


He went to Luisa’s floor and lay down, not sleeping, wondering what their future would look like from here. He wanted to be near her for as long as he could. When he was gone, what poison would Gwen fill her head with about him? 

The day would break soon and his lawyer would return his call with an appointment for a custody hearing, and Andreas would get ready to chop his little girl’s whole family in half.  

It felt like sacrificing his child to save himself. What kind of a good man does that?

He hoped that she would forgive him for it someday. 

—

story notes: a long time coming

extras: Gwen’s apartment // Andreas’s new apartment