Before Morning, Everyone on the Rooftop Would Have to Decide What They Had Really Seen

Nobody volunteered.

Officer Ortega held out one hand.

“Sir, stop. Ma’am, keep your daughter with you. My partner’s getting EMS.”

The younger officer moved toward the elevator while speaking into his radio.

Claire took one step backward.

Rachel saw it.

So did Ortega.

“Ma’am in the cream outfit,” the officer said. “Please stay where you are.”

Claire stopped.

Daniel’s cheek was still red from the slap. Rachel noticed Officer Ortega noticing it.

For one absurd second, Rachel wondered if she was about to be arrested.

She almost laughed.

The thought was so badly timed that something close to a laugh escaped anyway, one short breath that hurt her throat.

Daniel looked at her as if she had become unstable.

Maybe she had.

Three minutes earlier she had been on her knees beside the pool pressing both hands beneath Emma’s breastbone while a stranger counted breaths. Two minutes before that she had been underwater, eyes open against chlorine, grabbing at brown hair drifting below the surface. Before that she had been walking out of the elevator with a grocery-store birthday cake balanced in one hand because the bakery Daniel had insisted on using had delivered the wrong flavor.

There had been blue icing on her thumb.

There was still blue icing beneath one fingernail.

“Rachel,” Daniel said quietly, “we need to be careful what we’re saying.”

Officer Ortega turned her head.

Rachel stared at him.

“Careful.”

“For Emma.”

“No.”

“I’m not trying to fight with you.”

“You locked a door in her face.”

“I did not understand what was happening.”

“You locked a door in your six-year-old daughter’s face because your girlfriend was inside with you.”

Claire shut her eyes.

Daniel said, “Do not call her that.”

It was such a foolish thing to say that even he seemed to hear it after the words were out.

Seth Wilcox looked away.

Rachel’s anger shifted.

Until that moment it had been huge and directionless, too large for one target. Now it narrowed into something cold enough to hold.

Officer Ortega said, “I need everyone to stop talking about the incident until I can separate you.”

Daniel nodded immediately.

“Of course.”

Rachel almost hit him again.

The ambulance crew arrived before she could decide whether she wanted to.

Two paramedics came through the elevator with a pediatric oxygen mask, a monitor bag, and the efficient calm of people accustomed to entering rooms where everybody believed their emergency was the only one happening in the city.

Emma resisted the mask.

“I don’t want it.”

“It’s just oxygen,” Rachel said.

“It smells weird.”

The paramedic, a man named Luis with tired eyes and a Yankees patch on his backpack, said, “It definitely smells weird. You’re right.”

Emma considered him.

“Like plastic.”

“Exactly like plastic.”

That was enough.

She let him fit it over her nose and mouth.

Rachel sat on a lounge chair because he told her to, Emma in her lap, the white towel rearranged around both of them. Wet fabric squeaked against Rachel’s jeans. She could feel every breath Emma took.

In.

Out.

In.

Too fast.

Then slower.

Daniel stood ten feet away with Officer Ortega.

He kept looking over.

Rachel kept refusing to look back.

The rooftop party had been for Daniel’s fortieth birthday, eleven months early.

That fact had irritated Rachel since the invitation went out.

It was not really a birthday party. Daniel’s birthday was in July. This was September. The invitation called it a “pre-forty rooftop night,” which sounded like something created by a person who billed by the adjective. A public-relations firm Daniel’s company used had organized it, ostensibly to celebrate a recent acquisition.

Daniel had joked that he needed a reason to justify the pool cabana minimum.

Rachel had said, “You live in the building.”

He had looked at her as if she had missed the point.

Maybe she had.

Their marriage had become full of points she no longer understood.

The paramedic clipped a monitor to Emma’s finger.

“Any coughing?”

“She coughed water when I got her out.”

“How much?”

“I don’t know.”

“Vomiting?”

“No.”

“Loss of consciousness?”

Rachel hesitated.

Emma watched her.

“For maybe a few seconds. I’m not sure.”

Luis nodded without reacting.

“We’re taking her in.”

Daniel crossed the distance before Rachel had stood.

“I’ll come.”

“No.”

He stopped.

“That’s my daughter.”

Rachel tucked the towel around Emma.

“You remembered.”

“Rachel.”

“Not tonight.”

“You can’t keep me from the hospital.”

Officer Ortega moved closer.

“Sir.”

Daniel turned toward her.

She said, “You’re not going anywhere yet.”

Claire made a small sound.

Daniel looked at the elevator.

It was not a dramatic glance.

That made it worse.

He had considered leaving.

Rachel felt something old inside her finally stop arguing.

For months she had explained his absences to herself in ways that required effort. Work. Stress. The acquisition. Investor dinners. A sick colleague. Networking. Traffic. A late gym session. He had once come home at one-thirty in the morning smelling like peppermint gum and said a client had thrown up in the car service.

Rachel had believed only the part about the gum.

Believing him had become less like trust and more like a household chore. Something she kept doing because she had always done it.

Luis touched her shoulder.

“We should go.”

Rachel stood.

Emma’s arms went around her neck.

The girl weighed forty-three pounds. Rachel knew because they had argued about standing still on the bathroom scale that morning.

Forty-three pounds became much heavier when the child refused to let go.

“I can carry her.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

Daniel stepped forward.

“Emma.”

She buried her face against Rachel.

He stopped again.

The elevator doors opened.

As Rachel carried their daughter inside, she saw him reflected in the wet glass wall behind the pool: navy shirt, beige pants, silver watch, red cheek, two police officers on either side of his life.

Claire stood near the cabana.

For the first time, Rachel noticed that Claire was crying.

Quietly.