One Miscarriage, The End of Our Marriage

On our third wedding anniversary, I was half-kneeling at the hospital payment window. My bank card had exactly $27.60 left on it.

The doctor had told me, If she isn't admitted for bed rest, the baby could be in danger.

On the thirtieth call, Finn Henson finally picked up.

Phoebe Hardy's sugary voice drifted through the line. Finn, did you really get the Porsche delivered for me?

I clutched the bill, my hand shaking hard. You said the company had no money, but you have money to buy her a car?

Finn laughed. Marie Swanson, stop using the baby to blackmail me. If you hadn't crawled into my bed back then, do you think I ever would've married you?

He had always believed I drugged him into marriage three years ago, that otherwise he'd have married his childhood sweetheart, Phoebe.

When the truth was, that night he was the one who got drunk and wouldn't let go of me, swearing he'd marry me.

Once the alcohol wore off, he turned it all around and blamed me, leaving me to carry the shame of it for three years.

Soon after, Phoebe posted to her socials.

The photo showed the sports car and a bouquet of roses.

The caption read, Thank you for giving me and my child a home when I was at my lowest.

I pressed him. The hospital fee is only thirty thousand. I'm carrying your child!

His voice was thick with irritation. Phoebe got abandoned by some man overseas, stuck with a kid, it's pitiful. You're my wife. Would it kill you to be a little gracious?

The words had barely left his mouth when a sharp pain tore through my lower belly. Blood spilled out.

Before they wheeled me into the operating room, he sent one last voice message. Quit the act. A baby isn't that precious.

When I woke, the baby was gone.

The doctor told me, eyes rimmed red, Ms. Swanson, the damage is too severe. For the rest of your life... you won't be able to have children again.

I gripped the prenatal report tight, knuckles white.

My phone was full of evidence that Finn had been evading taxes.

Finn, I'll make sure you understand.

What you destroyed with your own hands wasn't only your child.

It was your company, your name, and the rest of your life.

......

Marie, stop looking at it.

Garry Head walked in wearing his white coat.

He was my high school classmate, deputy head of obstetrics and gynecology here.

He didn't say much. He came over and gently pried open the prenatal report I'd crushed into a wrinkled ball, one finger at a time.

When I spoke, my throat was bone dry.

Did Finn come?

Garry lowered his eyes and shook his head.

Beside him, the nurse said softly.

We called from your phone. He hung up right away.

I lit up the screen.

The chat was still stopped at last night.

That voice message Finn had sent was still there.

I tapped it open.

Quit the act. A baby isn't that precious.

The man's impatient voice rang out clear across the ward.

I shut the message off, my fingers trembling so badly I could barely hold the phone.

The door swung open.

Byron Mason, Finn's special assistant, stepped inside.

He wore a sharply pressed suit, a document in his hand.

Mrs. Henson, Mr. Henson asked me to bring you this.

I glanced at the cover.

Voluntary Termination and Waiver of Liability.

Byron bowed his head, his tone stripped of any feeling.

Mr. Henson's instructions are that once you sign, acknowledging this miscarriage was due to your own causes and that you won't seek money from the Hensons, he'll give you two hundred thousand in recovery compensation.

I stared at those few words.

My throat was dry and aching.

He's afraid I'll make a scene?

Byron said nothing.

Mr. Henson says your health is poor, so you shouldn't stir up trouble.

I smiled.

I flipped to the last page of the agreement.

If I filed for divorce myself, I would have to walk away with nothing, surrendering any claim to assets accumulated during the marriage.

Finn was guarding against me.

Afraid I'd use the baby as leverage, and even more afraid I'd touch his company's books.

I picked up my phone and dialed Finn's number.

It rang a long time before it connected.

In the background, a little boy was coughing.

Then Phoebe's sugary voice followed.

Finn, Spencer's wheezing again. Come look, quickly.

The moment Finn started talking to me, his tone went cold.

Did you sign the agreement or not? Don't start anything with me.

I bit down hard on my lip.

Our baby is gone. Do you even know that?

The line went quiet for a beat.

Then he laughed.

Marie, the baby was never your shield.

Your own body was too weak to hold onto it, and now you want to pin that on me?

Listening to him accuse me, even breathing hurt.

Phoebe's voice cut in again.

Miss Swanson, don't blame Finn. He stayed up all night taking care of Spencer, didn't close his eyes once.

Three years ago, when we got married, Phoebe said she was heartbroken and went overseas.

A while back, she suddenly came home with a sick child, weeping that some man had abandoned her abroad.

Ever since, a guilt-ridden Finn had poured every ounce of his patience into her.

Phoebe kept up the saintly act. You're an adult. Don't hold a grudge against a sick little boy, all right?

I looked at the bruised purple needle marks on the back of my hand.

How absurd.

My child was already gone, and she still wanted me to graciously step aside for hers.

Finn, is that what you think too?

What else? His voice was thick with annoyance. Phoebe suffered so much overseas these past few years. If it weren't for you back then, why would she have ever left the country? You became Mrs. Henson, and you don't even have that much grace in you?

I closed my eyes, and the tears fell.

I understand now.

I hung up and looked at Byron.

Tell Finn I want a divorce.

Byron froze.

Mrs. Henson, don't act rashly.

Mr. Henson left instructions. If you bring up divorce, you must first go back to the old residence and explain the drugging from three years ago, in front of Mrs. Fox and Miss Hardy.

He was threatening me.

Using the blame I'd carried for three years to force me to bow my head.

Garry stepped forward and handed me a medical records envelope.

Marie, the surgical records, the embryonic tissue sample, and the payment records, I've sealed them all for you, by the book.

I asked him.

Can these prove whose child it really was?

Garry nodded.

As long as the chain of procedure stays intact, the hospital can provide the sample for a paternity comparison anytime.

I pulled the needle out of the back of my hand.

Byron startled.

Mrs. Henson, what are you doing?

I threw back the blanket and got out of bed.

Don't they want me to explain things?

Let's go. Back to the Henson house, right now.

Garry drove me to the gates of the Henson villa.

He didn't come in. He just slipped off his jacket and draped it over my thin hospital gown.

"Marie, don't stand out here too long."

He pressed the bag of medical records into my hands.

"If you can't hold up, call me."

I nodded and pushed open the door I'd lived behind for three years.

A brand-new pair of children's sneakers sat in the entryway.

Beside them, Phoebe's limited-edition heels.

The wedding shoes Finn had knelt to slip onto my feet on our wedding day had been kicked into the corner.

The toes were grey with dust.

I remembered how he'd dropped to one knee that day, his voice gentle.

"Marie, I'll protect you for the rest of your life."

Looking back now, it was laughable.

The door to the master bedroom hung half open.

Phoebe sat on the edge of the bed in my favorite silk robe, coaxing Spencer Coleman to sleep.

On the nightstand was the little nightlight I'd bought for my baby.

The safety charm I'd gone to the temple to pray for hung around Spencer's neck.

I strode in and reached straight for that charm.

Spencer woke with a start and burst into wailing sobs.

Phoebe's eyes went red as she snatched the boy into her arms.

"Miss Swanson, what do you think you're doing!"

"Spencer is fragile, he can't handle being upset. Don't take it out on him!"

My mother-in-law, Linda Fox, came briskly down the stairs.

The sight of Spencer crying twisted her face. She raised her hand and slapped me.

My ear rang from the blow.

"Back five minutes and already dragging bad luck through my door?"

Linda jabbed a finger at my face.

"Marie, a wretched, luckless thing like you, everything you touch carries the stink of rot!"

I swallowed the iron taste of blood in my mouth and looked at her, cold.

"Where are my documents?"

Linda gave a cold laugh and snapped an order at the maid.

The maid carried out a cardboard box and dropped it at my feet.

Inside, scattered, were my ID, my household identity documents, and a few old clothes.

On top lay the little socks I'd bought for my baby.

Now shredded to pieces.

"All this bad-luck garbage, I dealt with it for you."

Linda smoothed her shawl.

I crouched down, hands trembling as I gathered the snipped-off threads.

The incision in my belly pulled tight, the pain breaking a cold sweat across my skin.

Phoebe walked over, watching me with a challenge in her eyes.

She leaned close and spoke softly.

"Marie, you couldn't keep your child, and you can't keep Finn either."

"If you hadn't played your dirty tricks back then, I'd be Mrs. Henson now. I'm back. People have to accept their lot eventually."

The triumph in her eyes was plain.

I clenched the broken threads in my fist. The moment I rose to my feet, hurried footsteps came from the doorway.

Finn strode in.

The first thing he saw was the men's jacket on my shoulders.

His face darkened.

"Your child's barely gone and you're already hunting for the next man?"

He stared at Garry's jacket, every word dripping with contempt.

I looked at the man I'd loved for three years.

"He's only my attending physician."

Finn scoffed.

"Three years ago you also swore you didn't drug me. And how did that turn out?"

"Marie, what is your word even worth?"

For a moment I couldn't process it.

My chest felt tight, and cold.

Phoebe spoke up, wounded.

"Finn, Spencer was just frightened by Miss Swanson. His asthma nearly flared up."

Finn brushed past me, went to the bed, and lifted Spencer into his arms.

He patted the boy's back, the motion practiced and tender.

"It's all right, Uncle's here."

I watched the scene, and my tears suddenly ran dry.

My child never even got the chance to be held by him once.

And here he was, playing the doting father to someone else's son.

Linda wouldn't let it go.

"Marie, apologize to Spencer right now! Otherwise don't even dream of taking those household documents."

I looked at Finn.

He frowned, not looking at me.

"Just apologize and we'll call it done. Phoebe suffered enough abroad. Now that she's back, stop making trouble for her."

He was always like this.

For the sake of his childhood sweetheart, he ground my dignity under his heel and offered me one weightless little word: "over."

I bent down toward the boy who'd taken my child's place.

"I'm sorry."

Phoebe covered her mouth, unable to hide the smile curling at the corners.

I picked up the household documents and turned to leave.

But Finn seized my wrist.

"A divorce? Of course you can have one."

He slapped a document down on the table, his voice hard.

"First sign this statement. Admit that three years ago, you drugged me to trap your way into this marriage."

I looked down at the document.

The final clause read: should I refuse to sign, the Henson family would lawfully pursue ownership of the century-old ancestral home in the prime district registered under my father's name.

The statement lay there in front of me.

Black ink on white paper, and just looking at it made my chest tighten.

It said I had drugged Finn three years ago, then used a pregnancy to force him into marriage.

It said that after the wedding I'd milked the child for money, greedy and never satisfied.

Not one word was true.

And yet it read like a crime the Hensons had drafted for me long ago.

I lifted my head and looked Finn dead in the eye.

"You really think I'd ruin my whole life just to marry you?"

Finn stared back, his eyes cold.

"The test report's sitting right there."

"Because of you, Phoebe had to leave the country! Marie, it's not that I never gave you a chance to explain. You just never could explain a thing."

That report from three years ago had been crushing me for three years.

It wasn't issued by the police. It came from a private testing lab the Hensons did business with.

The report said his blood sample showed traces of a drug.

And every step of the testing process had been handled by Linda, start to finish.

Back then I knelt on the floor and begged him to look at the original, just once. He threw the report in my face instead.

"You're still trying to deny it?"

That question. I still remembered every word.

Linda sat on the sofa, calmly blowing the foam off her tea.

"Sign it. Sign it and your father's old place stays standing."

She didn't even lift her eyelids.

"Otherwise, I have plenty of ways to turn it into collateral for someone else's debt."

She knew exactly where to cut.

That house was the only piece of my father I had left.

Dinner came around.

Linda deliberately told the staff not to set a place for me.

The Henson relatives took their seats one by one. I stood off to the side, and no one acknowledged me.

Someone covered her mouth and snickered.

"You can always tell when they're from some backwater town. First-rate at climbing into a man's bed. If it weren't for her, our Finn would've married into the Hardy family by now."

I dug my nails hard into my palm and swallowed the words.

Phoebe sighed and pulled a document out of her bag.

"Miss Swanson, this is a note from your gynecological records. I had someone look it up."

She arranged her face into something like concern.

"It says here, "suspected history of contact with non-fixed partners"."

"Your health is so fragile. I have to wonder if it isn't from the miscarriage at all, but something from before that already??"

She didn't finish, but the meaning landed clearly enough.

Linda pounced.

"No wonder she couldn't even hold on to the baby!"

She slapped her chopsticks down on the table.

"Something that filthy at the root, of course whatever she carried came out a curse!"

Seeing her chance, Phoebe took out her phone and cast it to the living room television.

It was a video.

On the screen, Garry was supporting me into a hospital room. I had no strength left, and my forehead rested against his shoulder.

Phoebe had cut out the part where I'd just come off the operating table and couldn't stay on my feet.

She'd left only those few seconds, the ones most likely to spark people's imaginations.

Finn watched the clip, and his face turned ugly.

He walked up to me and dropped his voice.

"So you've been so set on divorce because of him?"

I looked at him, and suddenly I laughed.

"Finn, I'd just come out of surgery. I couldn't even stand."

"And all you saw was me leaning on someone for one second?"

He said nothing.

After dinner, I went upstairs to the study to get something.

I'd barely reached the door when Linda's sharp voice slipped through the gap left by the half-closed door.

Phoebe had put a voice message on speaker inside.

"Don't keep the original alcohol test at the old house. Tomorrow at the birthday party, make her read the statement to the end, and this whole thing gets nailed shut for good."

Something dropped in my chest.

The report from three years ago. There really was something wrong with it.

I dialed Garry.

"Garry, that report from the private lab three years ago. Can it still be reviewed now?"

Garry was quiet for a moment.

"If there's a seal number, a chain-of-custody record, or a retained sample number, we can check whether the process was tampered with."

I hung up and drew in a deep breath.

Back in the living room, Finn pressed a pen into my hand.

"Sign it, and I'll tell Mom to leave your father's house alone."

I pulled off the cap and wrote four words on the back of the page.

"Divorce agreement."

Finn's face went cold. He snatched the paper and tore it apart.

"Marie, you're going to regret this."

That night, I went back to my rented apartment.

My phone buzzed. A text from an unknown number.

"If you want to know the truth about that test report, go to Spencer's birthday party tomorrow."

I stared at the words on the screen, my fingers tightening.

Spencer's birthday party was held at the old Henson residence.

A massive portrait of Spencer hung in the center of the living room, surrounded by piles of expensive toys.

One of them, a little blue plush bear, stood out like a wound.

It was the first gift I'd ever bought for my baby.

Now Phoebe's child clutched it in his arms.

Phoebe came toward me in a pure white couture gown, playing the part of the lady of the house.

Miss Swanson, there are a lot of guests today. Please, don't make a scene. I'm begging you.

She pitched her voice just loud enough for the cluster of society wives nearby to hear.

And just like that, I became the unhinged, vicious woman who might explode at any moment.

Linda rose from the head of the table, the confession in her hand.

Before we cut the cake, read this aloud.

She slapped the paper on the table, her tone glacial.

The words on it were vile. I was to admit that three years ago I'd drugged a man into bed and trapped him, driven Phoebe away, betrayed my marriage vows, and that the miscarriage was the result of my own filth and had nothing to do with Finn.

I looked at her, cold and unmoving, and didn't take it.

Finn walked over with a glass of wine, his voice low with warning.

Read it, and I'll cancel the mortgage paperwork on the ancestral home right away.

He thought I'd grovel for that house, the way I had for the past three years.

When Phoebe saw me holding my ground, she flicked a glance at the control booth.

Yesterday's edited video flashed up on the big screen.

In it, I was leaning against Garry's shoulder.

Right on cue, Phoebe let out a strangled sob.

Finn, I never wanted to hurt Marie.

But Spencer is so little. I can't let him be frightened by a wicked woman.

Linda jumped in at once, producing the forged copy of the medical record.

A woman who sleeps around like you, there's no telling whose baby was in your belly!

And you still had the nerve to blame Finn for not paying to save the pregnancy?

I turned to look at Finn.

He didn't say a single word in my defense. Instead he frowned and asked me,

Marie, was that baby really mine? Do you have the guts to get it tested?

That question shredded the last shred of hope I'd been holding.

My baby was dead, and he was still questioning whose it had been.

I picked up the confession, drew a deep breath, and began to read.

I admit that three years ago

With every line, the snickering around me swelled a little louder.

When I reached I willingly admit the child had nothing to do with Finn, my throat went dry from the weakness after surgery and the storm of emotion, and I couldn't stop the coughing fit that tore out of me.

Finn's frown twisted tighter.

Quit playing the victim. Keep reading.

Just then, Deidre Dickerson, a servant of the old residence, saw how ashen I'd gone from coughing and hurried over with a glass of warm water.

Madam, please, wet your throat. Deidre's face was full of concern.

With her back to the room, as she handed me the glass, she pressed half an old seal and a folded photocopy into my palm.

Three years ago, Miss Hardy went into the mistress's study. The original was taken by the chauffeur. Deidre breathed the words almost too soft to hear, then withdrew in a hurry.

I gripped the still-warm slip of paper, my heart pounding.

Last year, Deidre's little grandson had fallen suddenly ill and needed surgery. Linda, disgusted that she walked around with a grieving face and called it bad luck, had wanted to throw her out of the Henson household.

I was the one who'd covered the surgery costs out of my own savings, and dug in until they let her stay.

I'd never imagined that kindness would become the trump card that turned my fortunes today.

I swallowed a mouthful of the warm water and closed my fist around the photocopy.

Seeing me pause, Phoebe's expression shifted. She deliberately let go of Spencer's hand, the one she'd been holding all along.

Spencer came barreling at me like a little cannonball.

Bam!

He slammed straight into the unhealed wound on my abdomen.

Pain sent me staggering back, and I knocked over the champagne tower beside me.

Glass shattered, and Phoebe screamed.

Marie! You can't even tolerate a child?

Finn instinctively stepped forward, gathering Phoebe and Spencer into his arms.

He didn't spare me so much as a glance.

Linda jabbed a finger at my face and screamed.

That dead baby of yours was bad luck to begin with, and now you want to hurt a living child!

That line severed the last of my patience with the Hensons.

I straightened up, and in front of everyone, I tore the confession to shreds.

I laid it all out: the photocopy Deidre had given me, the signed divorce agreement, the surgical records.

Finn, as of today, I don't want you anymore.

Everyone froze.

Byron came bursting through the front door, drenched in sweat and white as a sheet, having sprinted so fast he'd even lost his keycard.

Mr. Henson! Something's gone very wrong!

He had two rush reports clamped in his hands, and they trembled as he held them out to Finn.

Mr. Henson, this is the paternity test you forced me to run earlier, the one you made me take your hair follicles to the hospital for so you could expose your wife in front of everyone! The hospital provided a legally sealed sample for comparison, but the result

Byron swallowed, his voice shaking.

You and the miscarried baby have a biological father-and-son relationship.

Finn stared at those four words, father and son, and his fingers spasmed.

Before he could get a word out, the phone in Byron's pocket rang again.

It was the accredited review agency.

Byron fumbled to put it on speaker.

Mr. Henson, regarding that test from three years ago, we've just confirmed the comparison against the half of an old seal that was sent in.

The blood sample submitted back then was never yours at all.