You can spend years translating cruelty into “concern” if the person delivering it shares your last name. You can excuse it as old-fashioned, as “just how she is,” as something you owe a little patience and a lot of yourself. Then one sentence lands so precisely that every euphemism falls off the bone. We’d spent the morning writing names in frosting, cartwheeling sugar roses across a hundred cookies. Emma tucked the tin under her arm like treasure and whispered, “Maybe this year is different.”

The worst part wasn’t the water. It was the silence. The split-second after I hit the pool and the world snapped from chatter and music to muffled nothing, like someone had pressed mute on reality. One moment, I was on the deck at my own baby shower. The next, I was underwater, fully clothed, seven months pregnant, sinking. My yellow dress ballooned around me, turning heavy and useless. Chlorine burned my eyes. Instinct told me to swim, but my arms and legs felt sluggish, like they belonged to s

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