My best friend and I got pregnant at the same time. My baby was a stillborn, but she had a healthy boy. I was happy for her until I learned she named him after my husband.
She said, “Me and him are… close.”
At first, I thought I misheard. We were standing in her kitchen, the smell of baby formula and coffee mingling weirdly in the air. I was still raw.
It had only been five weeks since I gave birth to my daughter, Lina, who never took a breath. I was there trying to be strong. Trying to smile, hold her new baby, not collapse on the floor.
But then she told me his name. “We went with Dion,” she said, adjusting the blanket over his shoulder. “After your husband.”
My heart stopped.
Dion isn’t a common name. It’s my husband’s middle name, not one she ever used or even heard me say out loud often. Everyone calls him by his first name, Rami.
So when she said that, I blinked. “Why… Dion?” I asked, trying to keep my voice steady. She didn’t flinch.
Just looked down at the baby, then gave me this weird, floaty smile. “Because me and him are close. He helped me through a lot, you know?”
The way she said it.
Like I should already know. Like I was the outsider in a conversation they’d had a hundred times. I left soon after that.
Didn’t say much, just mumbled something about needing to get home and take my medication. I could feel her eyes on my back as I grabbed my keys. Rami was in the garage when I got home, working on the sink he kept promising to fix.
I stood there watching him for a second, wondering how many things I didn’t know. “Did you help Alizah through her pregnancy?” I asked him suddenly. He didn’t even look up.
“We all did, didn’t we? Everyone was around her when her guy bailed.”
It was true. Alizah’s boyfriend ghosted her around month four.
Total loser. Rami had helped a bit—picked her up from a doctor’s appointment once when I had the flu, dropped off groceries a couple times. But so did others.
My cousin. Our neighbor, Runi. Still, something about how casual he sounded didn’t sit right.
“She named the baby Dion,” I said, watching him closely. He dropped the wrench. Not dramatically—just… dropped it.
Then turned around too slowly. “Oh,” he said. Like he’d just remembered something.
“Yeah, she mentioned that.”
“She said you’re close.”
He ran a hand down his face. “I mean, I guess. She called me when she went into labor.
You were still recovering. I didn’t want to worry you.”
There were too many cracks in the story. That night, I couldn’t sleep.
I kept thinking about all the times she’d come over when I wasn’t home. Or when I was, but too pregnant and too tired to entertain. I’d catch them laughing in the kitchen.
I always told myself it was nothing. Two days later, I called my cousin Sharanya. She’s blunt to a fault and has zero tolerance for BS.
“Okay,” she said after I gave her the gist. “That baby is definitely your husband’s.”
My throat closed. I hadn’t even said it out loud yet.
“You really think so?”
“She named him Dion, Nura. Come on. Who names their baby after a married man unless something happened?”
Still, I couldn’t just accuse Rami without proof.
The story doesn’t end here — it continues on the next page.
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