Part 9
Elena felt tears rise.
This time, she did not hate them.
Nathan reached toward her hand, then stopped before touching it.
She turned her palm upward.
He placed his hand over hers.
The doctor discussed support options without making them sound like punishment. Elena agreed to speak with a specialist. Nathan asked for resources for partners as well.
On the drive home, they sat in the back seat beside Clara while their driver navigated traffic.
“I was afraid if I mentioned postpartum anxiety, you would think I was taking Margaret’s side,” Nathan said.
“You did take her side.”
“I know.”
Elena looked at him.
He gave a tired, humorless smile. “I hear it.”
“Good.”
They reported Margaret to the placement agency that afternoon.
The agency director listened, requested copies of the recordings, and placed Margaret on immediate suspension pending investigation. She sounded shocked by the formula substitutions but less surprised by the private notebook.
“She has always kept extensive notes,” the director said.
“Did you know she documented parents?” Elena asked.
“Caregivers are expected to maintain objective records.”
“These were not objective.”
“I understand.”
“Did other families complain?”
The director paused.
Nathan leaned closer to the phone.
“Were there prior complaints?” he asked.
“There were disagreements regarding communication style.”
“What does that mean?”
“One family ended an assignment because they felt she was inflexible.”
“Did she substitute food without permission?”
“Not according to the information I have.”
“Will you contact them?”
“We will conduct a complete review.”
“That was not my question.”
The director’s tone became formal. “We must follow our process.”
Elena recognized the sentence. It meant the agency had liability concerns.
“Please preserve every record connected to her placements,” she said. “Including complaints described as communication issues.”
“We will follow all legal requirements.”
After the call, Nathan looked at her.
“You sounded calm.”
“I was angry.”
“I know.”
“Do not make calmness the measure again.”
He nodded.
That evening, Margaret sent an email.
The subject line read Clarification of Care Decisions.
She described her actions as temporary nutritional substitutions made in response to observed feeding intolerance. She stated that all products were commercially sealed, age appropriate, and administered in standard quantities. She denied endangering Clara and argued that the nursery recording lacked the clinical context necessary to interpret her decisions.
She did not apologize for hiding the bottles.
She did not mention lowering the monitor volume.
She wrote that Elena’s heightened emotional state had made collaborative communication difficult.
Nathan read the email once and closed the laptop.
“She is still doing it.”
“Yes.”
“She is turning your reaction into justification.”
“Yes.”
He looked toward Elena. “How did I not see this?”
“You did not need to. It was easier to believe her.”
The truth hurt him.
Elena let it.
The agency investigation expanded over the next two weeks.
Two former families agreed to speak with the Mercers through counsel. One mother described Margaret discarding expressed milk because she believed it had been stored incorrectly, then replacing it with formula without asking. The baby had not been harmed. The parents ended the assignment but declined to make a formal complaint because they were exhausted and embarrassed.
A second family reported that Margaret repeatedly muted a monitor and discouraged the mother from entering the nursery during overnight hours. They had considered her strict but effective.
No one had seen the pattern.
Each incident could be explained as a professional disagreement. Together, they showed something else: Margaret believed expertise gave her the right to remove parents from decisions when she found them inconvenient.
The agency terminated her contract.
It also offered the Mercers a refund.
Elena stared at the email.
“A refund,” she said.
Nathan sat across from her at the kitchen island. “It’s probably automatic.”
“It feels obscene.”
“We don’t have to accept it.”
“If we refuse, they keep the money.”
“Then donate it.”
“To what?”
Elena thought of mothers who hired help because they were desperate for sleep, then felt too ashamed to challenge the person they had trusted.
“A postpartum support fund,” she said. “One that provides independent care education.”
Nathan nodded. “We can do that.”
“Not through your company.”
“I wasn’t going to suggest that.”
“You were.”
“I was thinking about tax administration.”
She looked at him.
“Sorry.”
It was the first time in weeks his apology irritated her only a normal amount.
They hired no replacement overnight caregiver.
For a while, Nathan took leave from work. He had resisted doing so before Clara’s birth, arguing that an important acquisition required his presence. After the nursery incident, he told his partners he would be unavailable for four weeks.
The firm survived.
That fact humbled him more than he admitted.
He learned Clara’s different cries slowly. Hunger was sharp and rhythmic. Fatigue began as a complaint and built into outrage. Gas produced a wounded expression before sound. Sometimes she cried for reasons neither parent could identify.
On those nights, they took turns walking the penthouse.
They made mistakes in front of each other.
Elena warmed a bottle and forgot it on the counter. Nathan put a clean diaper over the old one. Elena cried when Clara smiled at a lamp before smiling at either parent. Nathan became irrationally angry at a package of wipes that tore incorrectly.
No one wrote their failures in a secret notebook.
Elena began meeting with a therapist who specialized in postpartum anxiety. The first appointment annoyed her. The therapist asked where Elena felt fear in her body, and Elena said, “Everywhere,” with enough hostility to make them both pause.
At the second appointment, Elena admitted she sometimes imagined disasters in perfect detail.
At the fourth, she admitted the fear existed before Margaret.
Speaking about it did not make Margaret right.
That distinction became important.
Nathan attended a support group for new fathers and returned home irritated that three men had discussed golf for twenty minutes.
“Maybe irrelevant conversation is part of support,” Elena said.
May you like
“It was clearly avoidance.”
“You sound like my therapist.”
