Five days after my C-section, my husband handed me twelve dollars and told me to take the bus home with our newborn while he drove his mother to lunch — in my car.
I was standing outside St Auburn’s with a five-day-old asleep against my chest.
Every breath pulled at the incision. Standing upright felt like somebody tightening a wire under the skin.
“Bryn. You actually want me to get the bus?”
And he looked at his watch and said: “My mother’s waiting for lunch. Don’t make this difficult, Etta.”
And he pressed folded notes into my hand.
Twelve dollars.
And behind him was the black SUV my father gave me before the wedding, which my husband had gradually started treating as his own, because he liked turning up to investor meetings in it.
And then Gloria came out in sunglasses and said the table was booked for forty minutes’
