All the Dangerous Things

by Stacy Willingham

Sometimes, the mind is just stronger than our attempts to override it.

“Nothin’ about grief makes sense.” He shook his head. “Not for any of us.”

“No,” I say, letting the silence stretch out for a beat too long. Then I turn toward him and take a deep breath. “She died.”

Shittt

So that’s what he had seen in me; I had always wondered. It wasn’t me that he was attracted to. It wasn’t that at all. I had just reminded him of her—only I was still shiny and new, a model upgrade, not yet broken by the torments of time.

“Because,” he says at last, a twitch of a smile appearing on his lips, “you had your kid with you that time.”

SHIT

The worst of it is that now, with a startling certainty, I believe it, too.

“She got pregnant,” he says at last. “And then a couple of weeks later, she died.”