She drove past the cemetery almost daily, now that the boys’ swim team practiced at the YMCA instead of at the Country Club. It was a part of town she wasn’t used to, but soon she’d know each bump and pothole as she made the drive back and forth four times a day taking them to and from their two-a-days.

She always noticed the green tents above fresh graves. The ones overflowing with mourners were sad, but the empty ones were almost devastating. The freshly dug hole waiting. Or the freshly buried body, already alone. Somehow the empty tents made her ache: A quick stab to the heart, and a dull throb in the empty spot in her belly.

The other thing she always noticed during the drive through this different part of town was how much it reminded her of her childhood home. No sidewalks or even curbs, so the grass grew right up over the lip of the street; small, tired houses alternately faded or freshly painted; overgrown yards hemmed by chain link fences – if hemmed at all. One day driving past, her son asked why people would even have “those metal fences.” In their part of town each measured square was defined by eight foot wooden privacy fences. Probably the chain link is cheaper than privacy fences, she mused. And her son wondered if maybe here people didn’t feel such a need to hide.

Another day, on the way home past the cemetery, her son mentioned that his friend from school had said that his grandparents were buried in that cemetery there. For a quick moment she envied him. A life led in one town where you could bury those you love near enough to visit. Her own father was buried many hundreds of miles away, close to her mother. But in later years, when she lay next to him, who would visit the two of them? She pushed the thought aside, but not before her hand slipped unconsciously to her flat lower belly.

If she could have been conscious of her chain of thoughts instead of hiding them away, burying them so deep, she would know that they shouldn’t be connected. Empty funeral tents and unvisited graves had nothing to do with the miscarried baby. A baby too tiny for a burial. Driving fast, she hit a large pothole hard, at the same time as she felt the familiar squeeze of her heart but by then she couldn’t remember why she was suddenly so sad.

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