Chương 2
Claire had been lying on the examination table with her dress pushed awkwardly over her belly while Ethan stood beside the sink answering work messages.
“Dad,” Dr. Patel had said.
Ethan had looked up.
“I need your attention for thirty seconds.”
Claire had smiled because Ethan hated being called Dad before the babies were born.
Dr. Patel had not smiled.
With twins, Claire’s increasing blood pressure, and the position of Baby B, she did not want delays once labor appeared established or if Claire experienced certain warning signs.
Ethan had nodded.
He had even repeated the instructions while driving home.
Claire looked from the paper to him now.
His eyes had found the red circle too.
“Ethan.”
He did not answer.
Victoria touched his back.
“We’re already late.”
His mouth tightened.
“Mom.”
“What?”
“Give me a second.”
“A second for what?”
Claire watched something uncertain move across his face.
It was not enough to comfort her.
Guilt was not the same thing as action.
She had learned that slowly during their marriage.
Ethan could feel terrible about disappointing her and still disappoint her.
He could apologize beautifully after choosing the easier person to please.
He could hold her at two in the morning while she cried and then spend breakfast explaining why his mother had technically not meant what she said.
Claire put both hands around her belly.
One of the babies moved beneath her palm.
The small pressure made fear rise so quickly that her vision blurred.
“Please,” she said.
Her voice sounded different now.
She was no longer asking her husband to win an argument.
“Don’t leave us.”
Ethan’s keys disappeared into his fist.
Madison stared at him.
For once, her phone hung forgotten at her side.
“Maybe we should just go to the hospital,” she said.
Victoria turned on her.
“Stay out of it.”
Madison’s eyebrows lifted.
“I literally am out of it.”
“Then remain that way.”
Richard unfolded his arms.
“Victoria.”
“Oh, not you too.”
“No one is attacking you.”
“I didn’t say anyone was attacking me.”
Claire pushed herself backward until her shoulder rested against the cabinet.
The contraction had eased, but a strange trembling had begun in her thighs.
She reached toward the place where she had dropped her phone.
It lay several feet away, screen down, near the edge of the entry rug.
Ethan noticed her looking.
“I said I’m coming back.”
“When?”
“Claire.”
“When?”
Victoria gave a short, irritated laugh.
“You’re behaving as if he’s abandoning you.”
Claire looked at her.
The older woman’s cream suit was immaculate.
Her pearls sat perfectly centered against her throat.
Even her black handbag remained hooked neatly over her forearm.
Claire had spent years trying to understand what made Victoria cruelest.
Open resistance did it sometimes.
Embarrassment did it reliably.
But the thing Victoria seemed unable to forgive was need.
Need made her contemptuous.
Claire had once watched her tell a crying waiter to compose himself after he received a call that his father had been hospitalized.
At the time, Claire had decided Victoria simply did not know what to do with other people’s distress.
Sitting on the floor now, she understood that Victoria knew exactly what to do with it.
She punished it.
Ethan rubbed his thumb over the edge of the key fob.
“How long have they been this bad?”
Claire stared at him.
“You were here.”
“I mean this close together.”
“You were here.”
“Claire, answer me.”
She almost did.
Answering him was a habit.
So was making things easier.
Instead, she leaned forward and reached for her phone again.
Ethan took a step toward her.
Victoria caught his elbow.
This time everyone saw it.
Madison’s mouth opened slightly.
Richard looked down.
Ethan looked at his mother’s hand and then at Claire.
“Mom, let go.”
“We have plans.”
“My wife is on the floor.”
“She is being theatrical because she knows you’ll give in.”
Claire stopped reaching.
The room became very quiet.
Even Victoria seemed to hear what she had said only after the words were loose.
Ethan’s face changed.
Not much.
A slight tightening around his eyes.
A slow breath through his nose.
Claire waited.
She hated herself for waiting.
Some stubborn part of her still expected him to become the man she had defended to everyone else.
Instead, he removed Victoria’s hand from his arm and said, “I’ll be twenty minutes.”
Claire felt something inside her go still.
Madison whispered, “Ethan.”
He would not look at her.
“The mall is seven minutes away.”
“Without traffic,” Madison said.
“I’ll drop them at the entrance and come straight back.”
Claire looked at the warning sheet beside her hand.
DO NOT DELAY TRANSPORT.
“Okay,” she said.
Ethan finally looked at her.
“What?”
“Okay.”
Her calm seemed to unsettle him more than pleading had.
Claire shifted onto one hip and reached again for the phone.
This time nobody stopped her.
Her fingertips touched its edge.
She dragged it toward herself across the hardwood.
“Who are you calling?”
She turned the phone over.
A crack ran from one corner of the screen.
It still lit beneath her thumb.
“Claire.”
She entered her passcode.
Ethan stepped away from the doorway.
“Who are you calling?”
She pressed the emergency-call button.
“Someone who believes me.”
The dispatcher answered before Ethan reached her.
Claire gave the address in a voice that sounded steadier than she felt.
She said she was thirty-eight weeks pregnant with twins, having strong contractions, unable to stand safely, and that her obstetrician had warned against delaying transport.
The dispatcher asked whether she was bleeding.
“No.”
Whether her water had broken.
“I don’t think so.”
Whether she felt both babies moving.
Claire closed her eyes and pressed one hand to the upper curve of her stomach.
“I felt one just now.”
The dispatcher told her not to walk, not to eat or drink, and to stay on the line.
Ethan crouched beside her.
“Give me the phone.”
Claire turned her face toward him.
May you like
“No.”
“I’m not trying to stop the ambulance.”
