Chương 3
“Can I talk to her?”
Susan studied him.
For years, she had treated him like family.
She had saved him a seat at Thanksgiving.
She had mailed him birthday cards even after he stopped remembering hers.
Now she looked at him with the careful distance people used when they were deciding whether someone was safe.
“Five minutes,” she said.
Mark stepped inside.
The house smelled like cinnamon and laundry detergent.
It smelled like the house where Emily had grown up.
A place where he had once felt welcomed.
Now he felt like a visitor.
He found Emily in the guest room.
She was sitting in a chair beside the window with Leo asleep against her chest.
The sight of his son stopped him.
For three days, he had imagined Leo as a reason he needed to come back.
Standing there, he realized Leo was not a reason.
Leo was a person.
A tiny person who had spent the first days of his life surrounded by fear because the two adults responsible for him had not been equally present.
Emily looked different.
Not dramatically.
She was not broken.
She was not the version of herself he had pictured after leaving.
She looked tired.
Her face was pale.
Her hair was tied back.
There was a small crease between her eyebrows that had not been there before Leo was born.
“Hi,” Mark said.
Emily looked at him for a few seconds.
“Hi.”
The word was polite.
That hurt.
He would have preferred coldness.
He would have preferred anything that proved she still needed him emotionally.
“How are you feeling?”
Emily looked down at Leo.
“Better.”
“Are you okay?”
She gave a small breath that was almost a laugh.
“That depends on what you mean.”
Mark looked at the floor.
“I mean physically.”
“I’m recovering.”
He nodded.
“I’m glad.”
Emily adjusted the blanket around Leo.
The movement was careful.
Protective.
Mark noticed she did not ask him to come closer.
“I read your letter.”
“I figured.”
“I didn’t know.”
Emily’s eyes lifted.
“About what?”
He swallowed.
“About how serious it was.”
The room stayed quiet.
Then Emily looked back toward the window.
“That’s the problem.”
Mark frowned.
“What?”
“You keep saying you didn’t know.”
“I didn’t.”
“No,” she said softly.
“You didn’t know because you didn’t want to know.”
The sentence landed harder because she did not say it with anger.
She said it like she had already spent hours crying over it and had nothing left to prove.
Mark sat down on the edge of the bed.
“I should have taken you.”
“Yes.”
“I should have believed you.”
“Yes.”
“I was wrong.”
Emily nodded once.
The simplicity of it unsettled him.
He had expected a fight.
He had prepared himself to explain.
He had prepared apologies.
He had not prepared for her to simply accept the words and still remain distant.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Emily closed her eyes briefly.
“Mark.”
“I mean it.”
“I know you mean it right now.”
He looked at her.
“What does that mean?”
“It means you’re scared.”
The accusation bothered him because part of him knew it was true.
“I’m scared because I almost lost you.”
Emily looked at him.
“No.”
Her voice was quiet.
“You’re scared because you finally understand that I was serious.”
Mark opened his mouth.
She continued before he could answer.
“I spent ten days trying to convince myself I was just tired.”
Her fingers moved gently against Leo’s back.
“I kept making excuses for you.”
“I was stressed.”
“I was recovering.”
“You were stressed at work.”
“I knew you had been waiting for this trip.”
“I kept explaining your behavior to myself because the alternative was admitting that the person I trusted most looked at me and decided I could wait.”
Mark looked away.
The words felt like they belonged to someone else’s marriage.
Not his.
Not the marriage where they used to dance in the kitchen while making dinner.
Not the marriage where Emily would send him pictures of funny things she saw during the day.
Not the marriage where she had once told him she felt lucky because he made ordinary life feel easier.
“What happens now?” he asked.
Emily did not answer immediately.
Leo shifted slightly in her arms.
She looked down until he settled again.
“I don’t know.”
That answer scared Mark more than anything else.
“You don’t know if you want to stay married?”
Emily looked toward the crib in the corner.
The portable crib.
The one Mark had not known was there because he had been gone.
“I don’t know if I can go back to who I was before.”
Mark lowered his eyes.
“I want to fix it.”
“I know.”
“I can.”
Emily looked at him.
“You can’t fix three days.”
“I know.”
“You can’t fix one apology.”
“I know.”
“You can’t fix the fact that when I needed you most, I had to call someone else.”
Mark felt his chest tighten.
He had imagined the hospital.
He had imagined what could have happened.
But he had not imagined the part after.
The part where someone else held her hand.
The part where someone else learned how scared she was.
The part where someone else became the person she trusted in the moment he failed.
“Who came with you?” he asked.
Emily’s expression changed slightly.
“Rachel.”
Mark nodded.
Of course it was Rachel.
The person he had always assumed would be there because family helped.
He had never considered that one day family would be helping because he was not.
A soft cry came from Leo.
Emily immediately shifted.
Mark stood.
“I can—”
The words stopped.
He did not know what he was offering.
Hold him?
Feed him?
Help?
The uncertainty embarrassed him.
Emily noticed.
Not cruelly.
Just honestly.
“He needs a bottle.”
“I can do that.”
She hesitated.
Then she nodded toward the kitchen.
May you like
“The formula is in the cabinet.”
Mark walked out carrying a responsibility he had performed dozens of times before.
