Chương 8
“Has Derek asked to visit?”
“No.”
“Then don’t ban him.”
My grandfather disagreed.
“He should not be near those children.”
“They are his children.”
“He rejected them.”
“He said something unforgivable. That doesn’t give us the right to rewrite biology.”
“He may frighten you.”
“He already did.”
“That is not an argument for allowing him back.”
“It is an argument for letting rules exist even when we hate who benefits from them.”
My grandfather paced to the window.
“You sound like your mother.”
“That usually means you’re losing.”
“It usually meant she was about to do something expensive.”
I almost smiled.
Derek came to the NICU Sunday afternoon.
He arrived alone, wearing hospital scrubs over his clothes as required, his hair covered by a disposable cap. Tasha checked his identification and reviewed the rules. No photographs without my consent. No touching the equipment. No raised voices. No discussing legal matters.
He nodded to everything.
I sat beside Emma. Her infection markers had begun to improve, though she remained on more oxygen than before. Noah slept with one leg stretched straight behind him, an absurdly confident pose for a child weighing less than three pounds.
Derek stopped between the incubators.
He looked smaller without the tuxedo.
“Which one is—”
He caught himself.
I said nothing.
He read the name cards.
“Noah,” he said. Then, “Emma.”
He pronounced her name carefully.
Tasha remained within sight.
Derek approached Noah first. He put his hand through the port after Tasha showed him how, then froze when Noah’s fingers brushed his knuckle.
His face tightened.
For one dangerous second, hope moved through me.
Then he looked toward the hallway and asked, “Is your grandfather here?”
The hope disappeared.
“No.”
“I need to talk to him.”
“You came to see the babies.”
“I did.”
“Then see them.”
He stood there with one hand inside Noah’s incubator and his attention somewhere else.
“Northbridge says I misrepresented my relationship with Riverside.”
“Did you?”
“I said I had family access.”
“You didn’t know my family.”
“I knew you.”
“You didn’t know me either.”
He pulled his hand out.
“Do you have any idea what this has done?”
I looked at Emma’s monitor. “Yes.”
“That’s not fair.”
“No.”
He waited, perhaps expecting more.
“The company found expense reports,” he said.
“What expense reports?”
He glanced toward Tasha.
“We’re not discussing this here.”
“You brought it up.”
“They’re saying some trips weren’t business related.”
“Were they?”
His silence answered.
The woman had attended conferences with him. Hotel rooms. Flights. Dinners billed to clients. The affair had not only overlapped our marriage; Derek had asked his employer to subsidize it.
“You did that,” I said.
“They never would have looked if your grandfather hadn’t interfered.”
“Looking did not create the receipts.”
His mouth pressed into a line.
Noah’s oxygen dipped. Derek looked at the monitor, alarmed.
“Is he okay?”
“Tasha?”
She came over, checked the sensor, and adjusted it.
“He kicked the lead loose,” she said. “He enjoys paperwork as much as the rest of us.”
The number returned to normal.
Derek breathed out.
Something in his reaction appeared genuine. Fear, perhaps. Or the shock of discovering that a machine could make his body obey it.
He moved to Emma’s incubator.
“Can I touch her?”
Tasha showed him where to place his hand.
Emma did not react.
Derek stared at her for a long time.
“She’s so small.”
“She was two pounds, six ounces.”
He swallowed.
“The doctor said they could have problems.”
“Yes.”
“What kind?”
“You would know if you had come before serving papers.”
His eyes closed briefly.
“I couldn’t.”
“You were downstairs.”
“I mean before that.”
“Why?”
He looked at the floor.
“I was afraid.”
The admission was so quiet that I nearly missed it.
“Of them?”
“Of this. Of seeing them and knowing I didn’t feel what I was supposed to feel.”
I watched his hand resting near Emma’s feet.
“Do you feel it now?”
“I don’t know.”
It was the first honest answer he had given me in months.
He stayed twenty-three minutes. He did not apologize. He did not ask to hold them when they were ready. Before leaving, he looked at me.
“Did you ever love me, or was I part of some experiment?”
Tasha lowered her eyes, pretending not to hear.
“I loved you enough to be afraid money would ruin it.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“It’s the only one I have today.”
He left without saying goodbye to the babies.
The woman contacted Naomi the next morning.
She wanted her name kept out of court filings. In exchange, she offered messages showing when Derek planned the transfer and what he had told her about the apartment. Naomi warned me that cooperation driven by self-interest could collapse quickly.
It did.
During the first interview, the woman insisted she believed Derek was already separated. Then Naomi showed her a photograph she had posted privately six months earlier from our anniversary trip. Derek appeared in the reflection of a restaurant mirror.
The woman folded her arms.
“He said you were performing for family.”
“My family wasn’t there.”
“He said appearances mattered to you.”
“What did appearances matter to him?”
She looked away.
We met in a conference room at Naomi’s office because I had finally been discharged from the postpartum floor, though the babies remained in the NICU. Walking from the elevator left me sweating. I hated that the woman saw me lower myself carefully into the chair.
She no longer wore my coat. She wore a beige sweater and no jewelry except small earrings. Her pregnancy was about five months along.
“I’m not a thief,” she said.
“You wore something taken from my bedroom.”
“He told me it belonged to him.”
“A maternity coat?”
“He said he bought it.”
“I made it.”
Her face flushed.
“I didn’t know.”
“You knew my children’s names were inside it.”
“I saw embroidery. I didn’t study it.”
“You quoted him when I looked at it.”
May you like
“I was angry.”
“At me?”
