Clutching the baby to her chest, she walked out the door. Johnny followed her, rifle in hand, all the way to the edge of town. He marched her like a criminal, showing no mercy in his drunken haze.
Annie walked down the gravel road with her head held high, even as the neighbors watched from their porches. She didn’t look back once.
A few neighbors tried to intervene, but Johnny’s erratic behavior kept them at a distance. At the town limits, he stopped, fired a shot into the dirt, and told her if she ever showed her face again, she’d regret it. He turned around and stumbled back to the empty house, where he collapsed into a black, dreamless stupor.
He didn’t wake up until late the next afternoon. The hangover was brutal, the kind that makes your bones ache. Still half-conscious, he called out for Annie to bring him some water.
When he opened his eyes and saw the rifle leaning against the wall, the memories of the previous morning hit him like a physical blow. The week that followed was a blur of self-loathing and silence.
He didn’t touch another drop of alcohol. But he couldn’t work, either. He was suffocating under a blanket of depression.
He realized that life without his “unfaithful” wife was unbearable. Eventually, he decided to clear out her things, thinking it would bring him some peace. He started tossing her remaining belongings into boxes with a frantic energy.
He reached into the bottom drawer of the dresser and found the baby’s medical folder. He was about to throw it in the trash without looking, but a handwritten note from the pediatrician caught his eye. In plain English, it stated that the infant had been born significantly premature…
