Chương 2
“This is my house too.”
“And he is my child.”
“Our child.”
Victoria’s face tightened.
“You think I need that correction right now?”
Leo hiccupped between cries.
Elena rubbed a slow circle between his shoulder blades.
“Please,” she said.
Both of them looked at her.
That was almost worse.
“I need to take him somewhere quiet.”
Victoria stepped forward.
Marcus shifted into her path.
She stopped.
The movement was tiny, but Elena saw everything in it.
So did Victoria.
For the first time, her anger cracked enough to reveal something underneath.
Not fear of Marcus.
Fear of being excluded.
“Move,” she said.
Marcus did not.
“He needs to calm down.”
“He needs his mother.”
“He needs nobody kicking at the person holding him.”
Victoria recoiled as though he had slapped her again.
Elena’s stomach turned.
She did not want another blow.
She did not want to become the excuse for one.
“Mr. Vale.”
Marcus glanced back.
“Don’t.”
He frowned.
Elena swallowed.
“Please don’t touch her again.”
Silence spread through the corridor.
Victoria lowered her hand from her cheek.
For the first time since Marcus appeared, she looked directly at Elena rather than through her.
Something almost like surprise passed across her face.
Marcus took a step backward.
His shoulders dropped.
“All right.”
The answer was quiet.
Elena nodded.
Leo’s cries had weakened into exhausted little sobs.
She could feel the damp warmth of his breath through her collar.
Rosa appeared at the far end of the hallway and stopped.
She was sixty-two, five feet tall on a generous day, and possessed the useful household instinct of knowing when she had entered a room at exactly the wrong moment.
Her eyes went from Elena to Victoria, then to Marcus.
“What happened?”
“No one needs you, Rosa,” Victoria said.
Rosa did not leave.
Elena had never loved her more.
Marcus rubbed his palm against the side of his trousers.
“Rosa, stay.”
Victoria laughed again.
This time the sound broke in the middle.
“Of course.”
She looked around the hallway as if noticing the house itself had turned against her.
“Of course she stays too.”
“No one is against you,” Marcus said.
“Really?”
Victoria pointed at Elena.
“She won’t give me my baby.”
“You kicked her while she was holding him.”
“I was not trying to kick Leo.”
“That sentence doesn’t help.”
“I know that.”
Her voice rose, then immediately dropped.
“I know.”
That frightened Elena in a different way.
Victoria suddenly looked tired.
Not softened, not innocent, simply tired enough that the hard machinery of her anger had begun failing.
She pressed her fingers to her forehead.
“I wanted her to move.”
“You kicked her.”
“I wanted her away from him.”
“Why?”
Victoria looked at Elena.
There it was again, that complicated expression Elena had been seeing for weeks.
Resentment, certainly.
But not only resentment.
Elena had noticed it first during breakfast three Tuesdays earlier, when Leo had reached toward her from his high chair while Victoria was sitting beside him.
Victoria had smiled.
Then she had excused herself before finishing her coffee.
“I asked why,” Marcus said.
“I heard you.”
“Then answer.”
“Not here.”
Elena shifted Leo higher against her chest.
A sharp pain traveled through her hip.
She tried not to show it.
Rosa noticed anyway.
“Elena, you’re hurt.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re limping.”
“I said I’m fine.”
The words came out harsher than Elena intended.
Rosa’s eyebrows lifted.
Elena closed her eyes for half a second.
“Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize to me.”
Victoria turned toward the windows at the end of the corridor.
Outside, beyond the glass, a landscaping crew was running a leaf blower near the hedges.
The ordinary mechanical whine seemed indecent inside the silence.
Marcus looked toward Elena again.
“Did she kick you anywhere near Leo?”
“No.”
“You’re sure?”
“I turned.”
Elena touched the carrier.
“He was protected.”
Victoria’s shoulders moved at the word protected.
Marcus saw it.
“So you did kick her.”
Victoria spun around.
“I already said I did.”
“No, you said you weren’t trying to kick Leo.”
“What difference does that make?”
“A lot.”
“To whom?”
“To me.”
Victoria stared at him.
Then she gave a small, disbelieving shake of her head.
“You weren’t supposed to be home.”
Nobody spoke.
Victoria seemed to hear her own words a moment after everyone else did.
Marcus’s expression changed.
Elena felt the shift before she understood it.
“What does that mean?”
Victoria looked toward the staircase.
“Nothing.”
“It didn’t sound like nothing.”
“I meant you weren’t supposed to be home yet.”
“I know what you meant.”
Marcus’s voice had become careful.
“I’m asking why it mattered.”
“It doesn’t.”
“Victoria.”
She closed her eyes.
“Stop.”
Marcus did not.
Elena wished he would.
She knew the difference between a question and a door, and Marcus had just found a door his wife desperately wanted kept shut.
Leo made a small exhausted sound against Elena’s chest.
She kissed the top of his head without thinking.
Victoria opened her eyes.
She saw it.
Her face collapsed for only an instant.
Then Elena finally understood that whatever had happened in the hallway had not begun in the hallway at all.
Elena had spent weeks assuming Victoria hated the easy way Leo settled against her chest, but now she saw something more dangerous than jealousy in the woman’s face.
Recognition.
Victoria looked at the baby as if he had betrayed her by being comforted.
Marcus followed her gaze.
“What happened before I got here?”
“Nothing happened.”
Victoria’s answer came too quickly.
Rosa folded her arms.
Elena wished she would not.
Rosa’s silences had weight, and Victoria had always hated being watched by people she paid.
“I came upstairs because he was crying,” Elena said.
Victoria turned sharply.
“Elena.”
Marcus raised a hand, not toward his wife this time but between them.
“Let her talk.”
“She works for us.”
“Then you should probably stop interrupting her.”
Victoria’s mouth tightened.
May you like
Elena shifted her weight away from the aching side of her hip.
“I heard Leo crying from the laundry room.”
