Yes

I learned to lie as a little girl. "Who do you love the best?" my father would ask when he fought with my mother. You, Daddy. I love you the best. Those questions come with an answer built in. Over time, the people change, the questions change, but the answer does not. Do you love me? Do you miss me? Did you finish? People need yes the way they need air. Yes, yes, yes. It became easy to say -- even as a lie, because the real truth is that if you love enough, you'll lie a lot. And I loved everyone enough to protect them from the things that were true, to protect them from no.

I loved Jake with everything I had.

I was only 20, and he was 21. We were babies. It was an honest mistake. An accident. I saw my doctor, stared into his eyes and begged for a lie. "It's mono, right? Just mono?" No. There was no way for him to give me what I needed, so he gave the truth instead. Later, I gave it to Jake.

"I'm pregnant," I said flatly as we ate dinner that night. He seemed happy. "Really?" he asked as he moved closer to me. "We're keeping it, aren't we?" I looked into his face and saw that he wanted it. Yes.

Before the week was over, I had made the appointment. He was busy building up fantasies of us as the perfect family while I was steeling myself to do the only thing I knew how to do.

Two weeks later, it was done. I took a half day from work, lied my way out of needing a guardian to drive me home, and put down my money. The procedure was over quickly, but the pain was not. I drove home wincing, wondering for the first time if I would have to pay for my lies, if this pain was my punishment.

I got home and crawled into the bed I shared with Jake, bleeding and crying, not for what I had done to my body, but for the wall I had just built. I loved, and I knew that love meant I would have to keep lying, keep building walls wherever the truth threatened to step into the light.

Hours later, Jake came home and found me in bed, half asleep with tears and blood dried around me. "Oh God," he cried, staring at me there. "OhGodohGodohGod."

I turned my head to face him, stare him in the eye. "The baby is . . . gone."

"You had a miscarriage?"

Yes.