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Chapter Thirty-Eight

It was the silence that hurt at first. The inability to speak and comfort one another with words. Caz had had her heart broken multiple times, but nothing felt as painful as this did, or what was about to come.

They’d lost a child.

This time, there had actually been a pregnancy, and now it was gone and both of them were hurting.

A shared dream, shattered into a million tiny heartbreaking pieces of grief and sadness and anger.

But in the midst of it all, they were losing each other, too.

The hospital had scanned and tested, confirming a miscarriage within minutes of them being seen. It had all felt so surreal—almost unbelievable, all so matter-of-fact, as though this happened to them every day.

Their baby had just stopped existing.

The nurses had been kind enough, but nothing could comfort Grace in that moment. Medication and a leaflet were organised, explaining everything they would need to do in the coming days and weeks.

The tissue, as they were now calling it, would leave the body in its own time, but the medication would speed up the process if Grace wanted to take it and not wait the ten to fourteen days it could take.

Grace followed the instructions the moment they were home and then went to bed with a hot water bottle against her stomach and her back turned. Caz stared up at the ceiling until Sunday drifted in, and they spent the entire day barely speaking, eating, or moving.

“You can’t just go back to work, Grace,” Caz had said Monday morning, when she’d woken from a fitful sleep to find Grace already dressed.

“Watch me,” Grace said without looking at her. She shrugged on her suit jacket and fluffed her hair out from where it was stuck beneath the collar.

“But Grace, don’t you think—”

Grace spun around. “I don’t want to think, don’t you get that? I want—I need to be busy—to not think. So get off my back and stop trying to mollycoddle me.”

Caz felt the sting of tears erupt, but she forced them back down. “I’m not. I just think we should take some time and—"

“Process? Is that what you were going to suggest?” Grace stepped forward, teeth bared. “I don’t need to process. Our baby died. That’s all there is to it.”

When Caz reached for her, Grace shrugged her off.

“Don’t,” she warned.

Caz sagged. “Grace, don’t be like that.”

“Like what?” Grace said, spinning around to glare at her. “I don’t want you to touch me, okay? And you can move backinto your own room.” She grabbed her bag and stormed out of the lounge.

Caz listened as Grace paused to grab her coat and put her shoes on, and then the slam of the door closing made her jump out of her skin.

“I lost the baby too, Grace,” she screamed, the tears finally bursting forth. “I lost a baby too,” she repeated, as she fell to the couch and grabbed a cushion, pushing it against her face to muffle the sound of her sobbing.

Her phone buzzed and she ignored it, too lost in her own world of upset and hurt. She needed to do this now, or she might never. Caz Madden wasn’t known for her emotional outbursts, unless they were in defence of someone she loved—like Grace.

When the phone buzzed again, she wiped her eyes and picked it up. A blurry text from Dani swam into her vision:

Dani: Get moving, you’re late.

Followed by another one:

Dani: Too late, Ron’s noticed. Say you had a flat tyre, that’s what I’ve told him.

Caz groaned. The last thing she wanted to do was go to work. But what else could she do when her boss was her father-in-law and didn’t know his daughter had been pregnant?

Caz: Overslept. Be in soon. Thanks for covering.