CAN I HAVE MY MALCOLM BACK?

MIREYA SARAI GRANT

I stood frozen in the doorway with my blood-stained dress clinging to my body, waiting for someone to notice me, and for a few seconds the laughter just kept going like I wasn’t even there.

Then my mother-in-law looked up.

Her smile dropped the moment she saw me, her eyes moving down my body slowly, cataloging the dried blood, the pale skin, the way my hands wouldn’t stop shaking — and instead of alarm, her face folded into something closer to disgust.

“What’s wrong with you?” she said. “Why are you standing there looking like that?”

I opened my mouth, but nothing came for a second. I was so tired, and the place where my baby had been felt like it was pulling everything else down into it.

“I was at the hospital,” I finally managed, my voice barely making it out. “I wasn’t feeling well, and I had to—”

“Mireya.”

Malcolm’s voice cut through the room, and when I looked at him there was nothing in his face I could hold onto. Just irritation, the same one he’d used on the phone.

“I already told you not to cause anymore drama. Go upstairs.”

“Malcolm, I just came from the hospital—”

“And I told you I don’t have time for your drama.” He’d already turned back to Samara, like the conversation was finished before it started. “She just got home. Can’t you see we’re celebrating?”

I looked around the table — my mother, my father, my aunts, my cousins, all of them dressed up, glasses in hand, none of them looking at me twice.

“Nobody asked what happened to me,” I said, quiet enough that I wasn’t sure anyone would even bother answering.

Malcolm didn’t look up.

I pressed my hand against my stomach and felt my throat close around the words before I even decided to say them.

“Because I lost my baby.”

The room went still. Nobody moved. Nobody spoke. Somewhere down the table, ice shifted in a glass, and for a second that was the only sound in the house.

Malcolm turned to face me properly for the first time since I’d walked in, his expression unreadable. “What baby?”

“Our baby, Malcolm.” My voice cracked straight down the middle. “I was pregnant. I didn’t even know — seven months, the doctors said. I lost her today.”

He looked at me for a long moment, and then something cold slid over his face, close to a smile but not quite.

“You were never pregnant.”

“Malcolm—”

“You expect me to believe that?” His voice had gone flat, final. “After everything?”

“I have proof.” My fingers were already fumbling for my phone. “The doctors showed me the ultrasound, they confirmed it was a cryptic pregnancy, they—”

“Seven months?” My mother-in-law’s laugh cut through the room like something breaking. “With all that weight on you, I doubt anyone could’ve told the difference.”

I froze.

The silence that followed had a different texture than the last one — heavier, full of eyes I could feel without looking up. I stared down at myself, at the blood on my dress, at the softness of my own stomach that had apparently been hiding a child.

“You’ve always been a big girl, Mireya,” she went on, and I could hear the smile in it without needing to see her face. “I suppose a pregnancy belly would just look like more of the same.”

My face burned. I pulled the fabric of my dress tighter around my waist without deciding to, some old instinct kicking in before I could stop it, and for one long second I wanted very badly to just stop existing in that doorway.

“You’re going to let her talk to me like that?” I looked at Malcolm, waiting for something, anything. “Please.”

He sighed and dragged a hand through his hair like I was the inconvenience in the room. “Her delivery could be kinder. But you can’t seriously expect us to believe this, Mireya. Samara just woke up after three years, and somehow tonight becomes about you again.”

“This isn’t a drama.” My voice rose before I could stop it. “I called you from the hospital. I told you I was bleeding. You hung up on me while I was losing your child.”

“Stop.”

“Malcolm—”

“Mireya.” He finally looked at me, and there was nothing behind it — no love, no guilt, nothing I recognized from three years of marriage. “Go upstairs.”

“Please,” I whispered, and I hated how small it came out. “Just tell me you’re sorry. Just say that much.”

“I said go upstairs.”

It landed harder than anything he’d said on the phone.

Then Samara’s voice broke through, thin and trembling. “Why is she here?”

I turned. Her face had gone pale, one hand gripping Malcolm’s arm like he was the only solid thing in the room.

“Please, Malcolm, take her away. I can’t look at her. She’s the reason I was in that hospital. She’s the reason I almost died.” Her breath caught, hitched, turned into sobs loud enough to fill every corner of the room. “I’m not safe with her here.”

Malcolm was at her side instantly, his hands finding her shoulders like they already knew the way.

“Mireya. Leave.”

“I didn’t do anything to her.” My voice cracked again. “I came home because I lost our baby—”

“Leave! Can’t you see she is scared.”

I looked at him one more time — the man I’d loved for three years, the man I’d begged to come home to me while I bled on our kitchen floor — and he didn’t look back.

“I came home to tell you—” I tried.

“Enough.” My mother-in-law’s voice sliced through whatever was left of my sentence. “You’ve ruined enough of tonight. Go upstairs before you make this about you again.”

I turned toward the stairs because there was nothing left to stay for.

My legs felt like glass the whole way up, each step sending a dull throb through my abdomen that made sure I couldn’t forget, even for a second, what I’d just lost. Behind me I could hear them soothing Samara, telling her it was okay, that she was safe now, that nobody would let anyone hurt her again.

No one asked if I was okay.

I stopped halfway up the stairs and looked back down, because some part of me still wanted to.

Malcolm had his arm around her, his mouth close to her ear, saying something too quiet for me to catch, his thumb moving slow circles against her arm like he’d done it a hundred times before.

He had never touched me like that. Not once, in three years, not even tonight, not even after I told him about the baby.

And he was still choosing her, right in front of me, like there wasn’t a version of tonight where he chose anything else.

I turned back toward the dark at the top of the stairs.

“Mireya?”

Samara’s voice again. I stopped without meaning to, and when I turned around she was still curled into Malcolm’s side, still wrapped in his jacket, still crying — except her eyes weren’t afraid anymore. Something else had moved into them.

She looked straight at me and let the smallest smile show.

“Now that I’m back,” she said, soft enough that it almost sounded kind, “can I have my Malcolm back?”