My Murder

by Katie Williams

Silas winced. “My murder”—this was the other thing he hated for me to say.

understandable

Telling myself that I was okay seemed like nothing but evidence that I wasn’t.

That’s the thing about having a baby: they are a part of you that is outside of you, so you can love them in the way you can’t stand to love yourself.

What was I then? Twenty-three? Twenty-four? The toddlerhood of adulthood.

I can only imagine that the absence lives deep in the center of you and is impossible to extract, not like the stone of a fruit, but like an oil that has seeped into you, like you’ve been marbleized.

“We can do this however you want,” I told her. “You can stay just like you are now, and I’ll put my arms around you. Or, if you’d like, you can turn to face me. We’ll hold the embrace until the session is over. Unless you want to change positions, in which case you can tell me so. Or if you want to stop, tell me that. It’s not a problem. Okay?”

this is the weirdest concept

“I don’t know who murdered you,” Early said. “I only know it wasn’t me.”

ok it has to be the husband dude

If I HAD BEEN a better wife, I’d have had faith. I’d have had love, unquestioning, boundless. A better wife would’ve held firm to the conviction that her husband would never have hurt her, never laid a finger, never harmed a hair. Me? What did I do? I went home and immediately started searching through all of Silas’s things.

yeah no i think you are in the right

“Maybe,” he said, “we could just trust that each other is strong?” “Good idea,” I said. “Because we are.”