Lauren ponders what's wrong with her

Lauren paced the living room between the couch and the television. The call with Amelie had eased her mind a little. Amelie had laughed. Amelie had called it silly. Amelie had said they had never dated, that Lauren had never buzzed her hair, that the wedding had been perfect. That should have been enough.

It was not enough.

She still could not shrug off the feeling that something was wrong. It sat under her skin like a bruise she could not stop pressing. She had even begun to ponder the unacceptable. Was she really into Todd? Why had she married him?

She tried to think about how the two of them had fallen in love.

Nothing came.

No first date. No stupid argument in a parking lot. No moment where she looked at him and thought yes. All that came to her mind was that she loved him and that she was supposed to love him. The two thoughts sat on top of each other like they had been stacked by someone else. She loved him. She was supposed to love him. She was his wife. That was the shape of it. When she reached past that shape there was only a smear, like a finger wiped across words written on a whiteboard.

She held her head in her hands and tried to fight back the intrusive thoughts. Long red hair fell forward around her face. The pink sundress still stuck to her thighs in places. Her pussy had finally dried and the guilt of that afternoon sat in her stomach anyway. Lesbian porn. Amelie’s mouth around hers. A photograph that should not exist. Please don’t forget. But what if she wanted to. Did she? She did not know.

She tried to think about when all of this had begun.

Todd had been asking about trying for a baby.

The thought terrified Lauren for some reason she could not name. It was almost as if she would lose herself if she had his baby. Like there would be no way back through a body that had done that for him. She saw it in flashes she did not want: her belly rounding under one of the cute dresses he liked, his hand on it, her tits getting heavier, her whole life narrowing to bottles and nap schedules and the word mommy, a role that already felt like it had been assigned to her.

But didn’t she want his baby too?

That was part of her duty as his wife. Stay home. Keep the place nice. Take his cock in the morning. Give him a child. She could hear the logic of it in her own voice and it sounded like someone reading from a card.

Then why did her hands start shivering the moment she considered it, like it was biologically wrong for her? Like her body knew a rule her mouth had not been told. She rubbed her palms together. They would not stay still. Her green eyes were wet. She laughed at herself for standing in a beautiful living room having a crisis about the exact life she was supposed to be grateful for.

A knock on the door pulled her out of it.

Lauren ran her hands through her long hair and took a few deep breaths, hoping to look presentable. Homemaker. Wife. Not the woman who had just fingered herself to two girls on the television and called her maid of honor to ask if they used to fuck. She smoothed the sundress down over her ass, checked that her nipples were not too obvious, and walked to the door.

She opened it.

On the other side stood a bunch of police officers in tactical gear. Vests. Helmets. The kind of rifles she only saw on the news. Black van at the curb behind them, engine still running. The afternoon light made the whole thing look fake, like a show that had pulled up to the wrong house.

“Are you Todd Langford’s wife?”

Lauren’s blood ran cold. Had something happened to her husband. An accident. A shooting downtown. Finance guys did not get tactical teams on the porch unless the world had tilted.

“Yes? Is everything okay?”

The officer in front nodded to the one beside him. His visor was up. His face was professionally empty.

“I’m afraid it isn’t, Mrs Langford. Please follow us to our van. We will explain everything shortly.”

She did not even bother to put on her shoes. The porch was warm under her bare feet. She followed them down the walk with her arms wrapped around herself, massive tits pressed together under the thin pink fabric, juicy ass moving because the dress did not have enough cloth to stop it. The neighbors could have seen them. Nobody came out. The street was empty, the same lazy afternoon it had been when she was doing dishes.

The van was black and unmarked except for some kind of numbers that did not mean anything to her. They opened the back doors.

She expected benches. Space to sit. A place where they would tell her Todd was in surgery or Todd was in holding or Todd needed her to come identify something.