Free Remember Mia by Alexandra Burt

parted the tissue paper. Photos with scalloped edges, tinged yellow by time, depicting people unknown to me. A little boy in a blue coat, a woman standing next to him, leaning on him, her arm around his shoulders.
    A property deed. Jack had mentioned that he had flipped properties while in law school but I didn’t know he owned a house. A deed for a brownstone on North Dandry in Brooklyn.
    Before I could make sense of the deed, I came across a black pouch, heavy in my hand. I felt the shape of a gun through the velvety fabric. I removed the revolver from the pouch and cradled it in my hand. It seemed old-fashioned, but I really knew next tonothing about guns and therefore I pointed it away from me and randomly pushed the cylinder. It swung to the right. It was empty.
    Below the black pouch was a concealed-handgun license card, laminated, with Jack’s information. I never knew Jack owned a gun, let alone had a license to carry, but it seemed logical for a lawyer to have one. Tucked in the corner was a full box with bullets.
    I grabbed a few and lined them up in my palm. They were cold and made a gentle clinking sound when they touched. I filled up the chamber, engaged the cylinder, and allowed my finger to gingerly touch the trigger. The gun I could stomach—lawyers owning guns isn’t unheard of—what was hard to believe was the fact that it had been there all along and I never knew.
    I turned the gun toward my face and looked down the hole. It soothed me somehow, and as I wondered what it would be like to put the cold barrel in my mouth, I heard the ticking of a wristwatch. Then the crinkly plastic sound of a diaper demanded my attention, a whiff of baby powder along with the stench of deceit, a combination that had the power to silently command me. I looked up.
    There was Jack, standing in the closet, Mia sleeping in his arms. There I was, gun in hand. He stared at me, his eyes blank. I hid my hands behind my back and for a second I wanted to kick the box to make it slide under his dress shirts, the Berber carpet allowing it to glide like a ghost to a secret hiding place. I needn’t have worried; Jack was focused on the usual.
    “Didn’t you hear her cry?” Icicles around his every word. Again, I wasn’t vigilant enough. Again, I failed to be the mother I should have been.
    There were words Jack never said, words Jack never used, yet I had heard him say them over and over again—
flawed
,
unfit
.
A bad mother, a bad wife. Faulty and imperfect.
I had no business being there. I had no business being at his office earlier, in his closet now, his house in general, his life, period. I had no business being the mother of his child.
    “What’s this?” I said, holding up the deed in front of him while hiding the gun behind my back. I was surprised by the strength of my voice. Everything was wrong. Jack, Mia, the ticking clock, the gun, the photographs, the property deed. “We’re not as broke as you’re making us out to be. While we’ve been struggling, you owned a house worth what . . . a million? Were you ever going to tell me? What other secrets do you have?”
    His posture wilted, he looked like a little boy: small, softened, less confident. “It’s a property I tried to flip but haven’t been able to find a buyer for.”
    I stared at him, suddenly realizing that I knew next to nothing about him.
    “It’s just an investment property, it’s in shambles. What did you want me to do? Worry you even more? You’re doing a great job at that already.”
    “I’m your wife, I think I ought to know everything about our finances.”
    “There weren’t any problems until you started with your obsessions, all those doctor visits while you were pregnant, all those tests you insisted on, all those specialists you consulted, over nothing. It was nothing until you made it into something.”
    “So it’s nothing to you? Or is it something you didn’t want me to know about?”
    “I didn’t say that. We are broke,