our fifth child.
Our other four children were upstairs.
And almost twelve months of lies suddenly had a name.
Lina.
My younger sister.
—
I filed for divorce soon afterward.
Ryan moved out.
Lina stopped speaking to me.
And somehow, despite everything they had done, I became the person my family expected to behave gracefully.
My father told me,
“You can’t force a man to stay in a marriage when he’s unhappy.”
My mother repeatedly reminded me that Lina was still family.
Then I lost the baby.
There was no dramatic
