Chương 4
It disappeared immediately.
“What do you want me to do?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s fair.”
She looked at him.
“Stop saying everything I say is fair.”
“Okay.”
She glared.
He rubbed both hands over his face.
“This is going extremely well.”
Claire laughed despite herself.
Then she cried.
Not gracefully.
Her nose ran. Her shoulders shook. She made a sound she would later be glad no one had recorded.
Ethan stayed where he was.
That was the correct thing, and she resented him for knowing it.
After a while, she said, “I need a tissue.”
He stood so fast he nearly hit his knee on the chair.
There was a box three feet away.
He brought her six.
“I need one.”
“I panicked.”
She took them all.
For a few minutes, they said nothing.
The world continued without permission.
An elevator chimed beyond the hallway.
Rain streaked the windows.
June woke and began rooting blindly against Claire’s cardigan.
“Oh,” Claire whispered. “Okay.”
She looked at Ethan.
“I need to feed her.”
“I’ll go.”
“Don’t go.”
He stopped.
“I mean—just turn around.”
He turned toward the stormy windows.
Claire adjusted her dress and brought June to her breast. The baby fussed, missed, tried again.
Claire breathed through the irritation.
“I can’t believe your mother tried to steal my baby and I still have to do this every two hours.”
Ethan stared at the ocean.
“Biology has terrible timing.”
“That’s the first useful thing you’ve said.”
June latched.
Claire closed her eyes.
Her body relaxed despite everything.
That offended her too.
How could milk let down while her life was falling apart?
How could the human body be so stupidly committed to routine?
A knock sounded.
Ethan looked back.
“Come in?”
Claire glared.
He looked away again.
“Sorry.”
Rosa entered with a woman wearing a charcoal cardigan and an identification badge clipped at her waist.
The woman introduced herself as Lena Ortiz, the hotel-hospital liaison social worker.
The luxury recovery suite belonged to a private maternity hotel attached by contract to the nearby medical center, not to the hospital itself. Claire had liked that distinction when Margaret offered to pay for three nights there. It had sounded less clinical. More civilized.
Now the distinction produced four phone calls and a forty-minute argument between administrators over who was responsible for what.
That, strangely, reassured Claire.
Real systems were annoying.
People did not immediately appear with perfect answers.
Lena sat at the console without touching the papers.
“First, nobody here is going to interpret a family court filing for you.”
Claire nodded.
“Second, if someone presents a signed court order, we have procedures.”
“Is there one?”
“Not that we have.”
Ethan said, “There isn’t.”
Lena looked at him. “You’re the father?”
“Yes.”
“Then I need you not to answer legal questions for your wife.”
Claire looked at Ethan.
He lifted both hands.
“I like her.”
Lena ignored him.
“We can hold your discharge while you contact counsel. We can also contact local law enforcement if you believe a crime has occurred. Whether you want to do that now is your decision.”
Claire felt Margaret’s voice inside her head.
Exhausted.
Emotional.
Unstable.
She hated that the words had power simply because she was, in fact, exhausted and emotional.
“Would calling the police make me look hysterical?”
Lena’s expression softened.
“It would make you a person reporting a suspected forgery.”
Claire looked down at June.
“What did she tell the court about me?”
Ethan looked away.
Claire noticed.
“Ethan.”
He rubbed his mouth.
“I haven’t seen the full filing.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
“What I know is she alleged you were experiencing severe postpartum mental health symptoms and that I was unable to provide adequate supervision because of work travel.”
Claire stared at him.
“You haven’t traveled since June.”
“I know.”
“Your office is twelve minutes from our house.”
“I know.”
“And I’m three days postpartum. How have I already demonstrated months of inadequate parenting?”
“I don’t know.”
Lena said gently, “Emergency filings can contain allegations. Allegations aren’t findings.”
Claire nodded.
She understood the sentence.
Emotionally, it made no difference.
“Did she use things I told her?”
Ethan said, “Probably.”
“Things about the panic attacks?”
“I think so.”
“Did you tell her about my therapist?”
Silence.
Claire looked at him.
There it was.
Another fracture.
“Ethan.”
He sat down.
His knees spread, elbows resting on them, head lowered.
“Once.”
“When?”
“About a month ago.”
“What did you say?”
“That you were having a hard time.”
“Why?”
“Because I was scared.”
“Of me?”
“No.”
“Then of what?”
He looked up.
“Of not knowing when helping becomes watching.”
Claire went still.
That sentence was too real to dismiss.
She remembered the night he meant.
Thirty-eight weeks pregnant.
Three in the morning.
Claire standing in the nursery holding a clean onesie and crying because she could not remember whether she had washed it.
She had slept two hours in two days.
Ethan had taken the onesie from her hand.
She had screamed at him not to touch anything.
Then she had sat on the floor and apologized to a dresser.
The next morning she had called her therapist.
She had also made Ethan promise not to tell Margaret.
“You promised me.”
“I know.”
“You told her anyway.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because she called while I was at work and asked if you were okay, and I said I was worried.”
“That is not an accident.”
“No.”
“Did you tell her about the intrusive thoughts?”
“No.”
“Did you tell her I was afraid I’d hurt June?”
“No.”
“Did you ever believe I would?”
He answered immediately.
“No.”
Claire watched him.
She wanted to believe the speed of the answer.
She also wanted to hurt him.
“You gave her the door.”
He looked at the floor.
“I think I did.”
Lena shifted slightly in her chair.
Claire had almost forgotten she was there.
“That doesn’t make what his mother allegedly did your fault,” Lena said.
Claire nodded.
May you like
“I know.”
And she did.
