Chương 2
Rachel arrived seventeen minutes later with her coat half buttoned and her hair still caught beneath the strap of her purse.
She did not knock.
She came through the kitchen door using the spare key, found me sitting on the floor with Ethan asleep against my chest, and stopped so abruptly that her keys struck the doorframe.
Neither of us spoke for a moment.
Then she looked toward the ceiling.
“Did it happen again?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’ve been sitting here.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
I shifted Ethan higher against my shoulder.
“No.”
Rachel crouched beside us and touched the back of his head.
Her fingers stayed there longer than necessary.
“You look terrible.”
“You drove here to tell me that?”
“I drove here because something knocked inside your wall.”
“Thank you for clarifying.”
She gave me the look she used when I was sixteen and pretending not to be drunk.
It had not improved with age.
“Show me the room.”
“I’m not waking him.”
“Then put him in the playpen.”
“He’ll wake up.”
“Daniel.”
I hated how quickly my temper rose around her.
Maybe because she was the only person left who remembered me before Claire.
Maybe because she had watched me become someone I had not chosen and refused to treat grief as a permanent excuse.
I carried Ethan into the living room and lowered him into the portable crib.
He stirred once, found the edge of his blanket, and settled.
Rachel waited until I switched on the monitor.
Then we went upstairs.
She stopped outside the bedroom.
For all her urgency, she suddenly seemed unwilling to enter.
“You heard it through the phone,” I said.
“I know what I heard.”
“So come on.”
“I am coming.”
She stayed where she was.
I understood then that she was scared.
That made me less brave.
I opened the door.
Nothing had changed.
The stacking rings remained beside the rug.
A tiny sock lay beneath the rocking chair.
Sunlight cut across the floor in a warm rectangle that made the room look offensively harmless.
Rachel walked to the corner.
She did not touch the wall at first.
Her eyes went to the painted border near the ceiling.
“Claire hated that wallpaper.”
I looked at her.
“You said it was in her hospital room.”
“It was.”
“You remember her opinion of hospital wallpaper?”
Rachel let out a breath.
“She complained about it for three hours.”
That sounded like Claire.
When labor had begun, she had become irritated by things she could not control.
The thermostat.
A squeaking cart in the hallway.
The brand of ice chips.
She had asked me twice why hospitals bought artwork that looked designed to make sick people surrender.
“What did she say about the flowers?”
“That they looked like something from a motel where you’d get murdered.”
I laughed.
The sound came out before I could stop it.
Rachel laughed too.
It lasted perhaps two seconds.
Then both of us became quiet.
That was grief at its most dishonest.
It could hand you a person back for the length of a laugh and take them away again before you had finished breathing.
Rachel raised her phone and compared the photograph with the wall.
“This isn’t identical.”
“That’s what I said.”
“The pattern is close, though.”
“Lots of patterns are close.”
“I’m agreeing with you.”
“You don’t sound like it.”
She lowered the phone.
“I don’t know what you want from me.”
“I want you not to turn this into Claire.”
Her expression hardened.
“I didn’t.”
“You did the second you sent that picture.”
“You asked me if I had taught Ethan to say those things.”
“Because someone must have.”
“Fine.”
She stepped away from the corner.
“Maybe one of the nannies did.”
The sentence stayed between us.
I had mentioned the nannies to Dr. Mitchell because they were the only recent change in Ethan’s life, but until that moment I had not taken the possibility seriously.
Three women had worked for us during the previous five months.
One had left when her college schedule changed.
Another had lasted three weeks before I fired her for repeatedly arriving late.
The most recent, Melissa, had quit without explanation six days earlier.
Ethan had cried whenever Melissa entered his bedroom during her last week.
I had assumed separation anxiety.
Rachel watched my face.
“Which one?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do.”
“I said I don’t.”
“You’re doing the thing.”
“What thing?”
“The thing where you know exactly what you’re thinking and get mad at everybody else so you don’t have to say it.”
I walked to the window.
Across the street, a man in a red baseball cap was washing a pickup truck in his driveway.
His dog sat beside the hose and kept trying to bite the water.
It seemed absurd that a whole ordinary afternoon could continue thirty yards away.
“Melissa quit last Tuesday,” I said.
Rachel waited.
“She texted at eleven at night and said she wouldn’t be coming back.”
“Did you ask why?”
“Yes.”
“What did she say?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing at all?”
“She didn’t answer.”
Rachel folded her arms.
“Ethan was afraid of her?”
“Toward the end.”
“And you kept letting her watch him?”
There it was.
I turned around.
“You think I didn’t notice?”
“I asked a question.”
“No, you accused me politely.”
“You said he cried when she came into the room.”
“He cried when the mailman came through the front door last month.”
“The mailman doesn’t babysit him.”
“You have two kids and a husband who works from home.”
Rachel flinched.
I saw it and kept going anyway.
“You’ve never had to make these decisions alone.”
“Don’t.”
“You asked.”
“I asked about Melissa.”
“You made it about me.”
“Because this is your house and your son.”
The words hit exactly where she intended.
For several seconds, all I could hear was the neighbor’s hose hissing against concrete outside.
Rachel looked down.
May you like
When she spoke again, her voice was quieter.
“That was cruel.”
