What restored your faith in humanity?
The Miscarriage Lie
What restored your faith in humanity? My sister Beth faked her miscarriage. A week after she supposedly lost her first child, she disappeared. We were heartbroken until her husband Vince and I tracked her down and found her still very much pregnant.
When we cornered her in the hallway of the apartment she’d been renting, she froze.
Her belly was unmistakably round, and she backed against her door with her hands protectively over her stomach.
“Bth?” I gasped, staring at her obviously pregnant belly. “What is going on? We’ve been looking for you for 2 months. You said you lost the baby.”
Vince fell to his knees right there in the hallway, sobbing like I’d never seen a man cry before.
“Our babies alive, Beth? Our babies alive? Why would you do this to me? I held you while you cried about losing our baby, and it was all a lie.”
“Please leave,” Beth whispered, fumbling for her keys while keeping her back pressed to the door. “Please, just go away.”
“I thought you were dead,” Vince wailed, crawling toward her on his knees. “You disappeared, and I thought you’d taken your life.”
Your family has been destroyed. We had a memorial service. We’d all cried at that service for the baby that would never be born. Mom hasn’t stopped crying since you left.
“How could you do this to us?” I asked Beth, feeling rage mixing with confusion. Mom had held.
Dad’s been driving around at night looking for you.
“I had to leave,” Beth said, her voice barely audible.
Vince was still on the floor, reaching for her ankles.
“I was the perfect husband. I took care of you after you lost the baby. I drove you to the doctor. I told everyone how brave you were.”
“You’ve been hurting me for 2 years,” Beth said suddenly.
And the hallway went silent, except for Vince’s dramatic sobbing.
“What?” I asked.
But even as the word left my mouth, I started remembering things. I remembered Beth wearing long sleeves in summer, the way she’d flinch when Vince touched her at family dinners, and how she’d stopped being herself after the wedding.
Beth was shaking now, pressing herself harder against the door.
“He’s been abusing me since our wedding night. No one would believe me because he’s so charming in public. He’s careful about where he grabs me. No one sees the bruises.”
“That’s insane,” Vince said. But his tears had stopped instantly. “Beth’s having pregnancy hormones making her paranoid. She needs help.”
“You threw me down the stairs 3 months ago,” Beth said to him.
“You said you hoped I’d lose the baby because you didn’t want to be tied down.” I stared at Vince, who was now standing up, his grief completely gone. My mind raced back to that day Beth had called, saying she’d fallen down the stairs.
Vince had been so attentive at the hospital. Now I wanted to vomit.
“She’s obviously having some kind of breakdown.” Vince said to me, “Pregnancy psychosis is real. We need to get her help.”
That’s when Beth pulled out her phone with shaking hands and showed me a photo. It was a box of pills hidden in what looked like Vince’s toolbox in their garage.
“I found these two days before I faked the miscarriage,” she said. “They’re abortion pills, misprotol.” “He was going to put them in my food to make me lose the baby.”
“You’re delusional,” Vince said, but his face had gone pale.
“I looked them up,” Beth said, her voice stronger now. The dose he had would have caused severe bleeding and miscarriage. He was going to poison me and our baby and make it look natural. I felt sick looking at the photo on her phone.
This was my brother-in-law, the man who’d coached my son’s little league team.
“You were going to kill your baby?”
“She’s lying,” Vince said, moving toward Beth. “She’s mentally ill.”
“So, I went to my OB appointment alone and came home and told him the doctor said I lost the baby,” Beth said. “I cried for days to make it believable. Then, I ran the second I could. I knew he wouldn’t look for me because I gave him what he wanted. But I wasn’t going to let him take this baby.”
Vince’s mask was completely gone. His face twisted.
“You stupid Do you know what you’ve put me through? The sympathy I had to pretend to accept. The grief I had to fake.”
“You were going to kill us both eventually,” Beth screamed.
“I didn’t want a baby and you just wouldn’t shut up,” Vince screamed. “And now you’ve humiliated me in front of everyone. They all think I’m some grieving father.”
I stepped between them as Vince moved toward Beth, my whole body shaking with rage. “Don’t you touch her.” “Get out of my way,” Vince snarled at me. “She’s my wife.”
“Not anymore,” Beth said. “Not ever again.”
Vince’s face went purple with rage.
“You think you can leave me? You think you can take my child? I’ll kill you before I let that happen.”
That’s when he grabbed me by the throat and threw me against the wall so hard my vision went black. I heard Beth screaming as he lunged for her pregnant belly. My back hit the wall hard and I slid down to the floor, pain shooting through my skull.
Through my blurry vision, I saw Vince’s hands reaching for Beth’s round belly while she swung her heavy purse straight at his face. The purse connected with his nose, and he stumbled back, cursing.
Beth was screaming for help, and a door opened down the hall. An older man stuck his head out and shouted that he was calling 911 right now. The neighbor rushed out in his pajamas carrying a baseball bat and pushed himself between Vince and Beth.
Vince’s whole face changed the second he saw the bat. His rage disappeared, and suddenly he looked confused and worried. He started saying Beth had attacked him first and that she was having some kind of mental breakdown during her pregnancy.
The neighbor wasn’t buying it and kept the bat raised while Beth pressed herself against her apartment door, sobbing. I tried to stand, but the room was spinning, and I had to grab the wall to stay upright.
