I Thought My Husband Died—Until I Saw Him Carrying Another Woman’s Child

They buried my husband in a closed casket.

I was eight months pregnant, squeezed into a black dress that wouldn’t sit right over my stomach, while strangers spoke in hushed voices and lowered the coffin into the ground. Nobody would let me see him. They said the car accident was “too severe.” They said I should hold on to the good memories—like that was supposed to be enough to quiet the screaming in my chest.

As if a memory could compete with a grave.

By the next morning, the baby inside me stopped moving.