a short story

"My husband of twenty-three years left me for some young thing. And, you know, I should've seen it coming. He left his ex-wife for me and I was around her age, but still. Twenty-three years, just, gone. Down the drain. All that love, my efforts, for nothing. I can't give him what he wants so I'm being discarded." Her lips are upturned in a smile, but her eyes show a different story.

I nod, unsure what to say.

The woman casts her eyes back to her cup. "Four miscarriages," she whispers. "We tried to move past it, looked into surrogates, but he'd always find an issue with one saying 'It's not the same.'"

I want to reach out and comfort her, but that armor -that she wears so fiercely- makes me leave my hands as is.