Page 134 of PS: I Hate You

“No,” he growls. “It wasn’t. And I’m going to read you the letter now because I didn’t want to talk about this on the phone. I needed to see your face even if you won’t meet my eyes.”

Dom pulls a familiar envelope out of his back pocket, and my heart hurts to see the ragged edge of where it’s already been torn open.

He slips the letter free and starts reading before I can decide if I want to hear it.

Dear Maddie and Dom,

Welcome to North Dakota!

You should be standing near, or under, a giant bird right about now. Take a picture for me.

Now, let’s get to what I want you both to do here in my memory.

This is a big one. First off, Maddie, your job is to listen. That’s it. Just listen. Let Dom speak before you decide anything.

Secondly, Dom, your job is to tell my sister why we didn’t speak for a stretch of time this past year.

And hey, maybe this request is immaterial. Maybe you’ve already told her everything. But if I know you, Dom, which I think I still do, you haven’t. And let me give you a piece of advice.

Tell Maddie everything. Always. Don’t hold back.

I wish I hadn’t.

Love,

Josh

“What does that mean?” My agitated fingers fist in my sweater, trying to find comfort in the knitted material. “About you not talking to Josh?”

Dom refolds the paper, then extends his arm so I can take it from him. I do, unfolding and scanning the letter. Everything is as he just read it.

“He meant exactly what he said. Josh refused to talk to me for a month.” Dom straightens his shoulders, bracing himself for whatever comes next. “He kept pushing me about the divorce. Saying that when he was gone, Rosaline and I would need each other. That whatever happened between us we should forgive and forget and rebuild our marriage. One day, I snapped.” Dom’s entire body is tense as he speaks. “I told him that Ros and I never should’ve gotten married in the first place. That I knew it was a mistake even when I spoke my vows.”

I jerk my head back, blinking fast. “You…What?”

Dom leans toward me, his earnest gaze holding mine. “I told Josh we got married because Rosaline was pregnant.”

Those last three words play on repeat in my head, looping over and over again as my memory takes me back to that morning when I watched as Dom proposed. She’d had tears in her eyes, glittering like delicate jewels on her lashes.

I’d thought they were happy tears.

I’d thought a lot of things.

“But”—I gasp, my airways tight—“you don’t have a kid.” That’s something I would know, no matter how much I tried to cut out all reminders of Dom from my life.

His gaze falls to his shiny shoes, and I hear a thickness in his voice when he next speaks.

“A miscarriage. A month after we got married.”

My first thought comes with an unexpected wave of pain.

Josh is not the first one Dom lost.

The man is a planner. Fatherhood may have been a surprise, but he’d immediately dive into the role. Pick names, paint the bedroom, research the safest car seat. Hell, he probably started a college fund for his unborn child.

And then there was no kid.

One more shitty thing in life that Dom couldn’t control. A loss that probably wrecked him. Maybe left scars.