My husband made fifteen people laugh at my stomach six weeks after I gave birth to our twins.

Dawn arrived with a thin, freezing mist clinging to the yellowed grass in our backyard. The twins had finally fallen asleep at four in the morning, leaving me with two hours of restless, vigilant slumber. My body throbbed with the specific, bone-deep exhaustion known only to nursing mothers.

When I entered the hallway at six-thirty, the bathroom door was cracked open. A sliver of warm light spilled across the hardwood floor.

I approached quietly, expecting to find Emma brushing her teeth before first grade. Instead, I stopped, frozen by the sight reflected in the mirror.

Emma stood on her wooden stepping stool, her nightgown hiked up to her ribs. She was turning sideways, twisting her small torso, sucking in her breath until her ribs protruded sharply against her pale skin. She had one hand splayed across her tiny belly, studying it with an expression of intense, desperate scrutiny that no six-year-old child should possess. She patted it twice, exactly the way Brian had patted mine at his mother's dining table, her small face collapsing into a mask of quiet panic.

A knot of pure fury tightened in the pit of my stomach.

“Emma,” I whispered, stepping into the room.

She jumped off the stool so fast she nearly lost her balance, instantly yanking her nightgown down to her ankles. Her eyes were wide, caught in a shame she didn't yet have the vocabulary to define. “I was just looking,” she stammered, backing toward the towel rack. “I was just seeing if it was flat.”

I sat on the edge of the porcelain bathtub, pulling her into my lap despite the twinge in my abdomen. “You don't need to check, my love. Your body is perfect. It is doing its job by keeping you alive, running, and playing.”

She didn't answer. She buried her face in my shoulder, rigid and tense.

Ten minutes later, in the kitchen, Brian was pouring coffee into his travel mug. He wore his tailored charcoal suit, smelling of cedarwood cologne and clean laundry—the image of a reliable, respectable suburban father.

“Morning,” he said briskly, not looking up as the coffee streamed from the pot. “I’ve got the regional quarterly meeting today, so I’ll probably be late getting home. Don't wait dinner for me.”

I poured a glass of milk and placed a warm piece of toast with peanut butter on the island for Emma. “Brian, we need to talk about Emma right now.”

He sighed, rolling his eyes as he capped his mug. “Kate, if this is still about Sunday dinner, I’m begging you to let it drop. I told you, it was a joke. A stupid, off-the-cuff remark. Frank thought it was hilarious. You’re turning a molehill into a mountain.”

“She stood in front of the bathroom mirror this morning checking to see if her stomach was flat,” I said, my voice shaking with restrained rage. “She refused her dinner last night because she’s terrified of growing up to look like me, because her father made a spectacle of her mother's body in front of fifteen people.”

Brian paused, his hand hovering over his briefcase. For a fraction of a second, something like guilt flitted across his features, but it was quickly replaced by defensive annoyance. “She’s six, Kate. She doesn't understand adult banter. You’re projecting your own postpartum insecurities onto our kid. You’re hyper-fixating on this because your hormones are out of balance.”

“Do not dare blame my hormones for your lack of empathy,” I hissed, stepping closer to him, keeping my voice down so Emma wouldn't hear from the breakfast table. “You broke something in her head on Sunday. And you broke something between us.”

Brian grabbed his keys, shaking his head with an exasperated chuckle that made my skin crawl. “Get some sleep today, Katherine. Call your physical therapist. You’re losing your grip.”