Chương 5
“I know.”
“We should get you checked.”
She looked at him.
“Are you asking because you’re worried or because you want documentation?”
His face gave him away.
“Both.”
“Thank you for not lying.”
He nodded.
Claire glanced down at Noah.
“Let me change him first.”
“I can.”
She almost said no.
The word reached the back of her teeth.
Then she stopped herself.
“Okay.”
Ethan stepped forward carefully, waiting until Claire shifted Noah toward him.
Their hands touched beneath the baby.
Claire flinched.
Not because Ethan hurt her.
Because another hand had reached for Noah less than an hour earlier.
Ethan felt it.
He froze.
Claire hated the expression on his face.
“Take him,” she whispered.
“I can wait.”
“Take your son.”
He did.
Noah stirred against his father’s chest, made one small protesting sound, then settled.
Ethan looked down at him.
Claire watched a man discover that holding his own baby could feel like being trusted with evidence.
She turned away.
The broken bracelet remained on the counter.
Neither of them touched it.
By midnight, Claire had been examined, Noah had been checked because she insisted, and all three were back home.
Nothing was broken.
Noah appeared unharmed.
Claire’s wrist would bruise.
Her eye would likely look worse the next morning.
There was no elegant medical language that made any of it feel smaller.
Ethan placed the discharge papers on the kitchen counter beside the bracelet, then immediately moved them farther away.
“Sorry.”
Claire stared at him.
“For what?”
“I don’t know. It felt wrong to put them next to it.”
She took off her earrings.
One slipped from her fingers and bounced once on the marble.
They both watched it roll toward the sink.
Ethan caught it before it reached the edge.
Claire began laughing.
The sound surprised them both.
It was not happiness.
It was not hysteria.
It was only exhaustion finding the wrong door out.
Ethan held the tiny earring between two fingers.
Claire covered her mouth, trying not to wake Noah in the nearby bassinet.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“Stop apologizing.”
“You said that already.”
“I’m committed to the theme.”
She laughed again.
Then she sat on the floor.
Ethan’s humor disappeared.
“Claire?”
“I’m okay.”
“You’re on the floor.”
“I know where I am.”
He crouched but did not touch her.
Claire leaned against the dark navy cabinet.
The marble backsplash above her caught the teal under-cabinet light in thin green reflections.
“I don’t want to sleep.”
“All right.”
“I don’t want to talk either.”
“All right.”
“Stop saying all right.”
He sat on the floor across from her.
“Noted.”
For several minutes, they listened to Noah breathe.
A refrigerator motor clicked on.
A car passed outside.
Somewhere farther down the block, a garage door opened and closed.
Claire stared at Ethan’s black shoes.
He had not changed out of his dress clothes.
Neither had she.
Her champagne satin dress had dried stiff near the hip where the sink water had soaked it.
“I want to make a report,” she said.
Ethan’s eyes lifted.
She could see relief before he hid it.
That irritated her.
“Don’t look relieved.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You don’t get to be relieved because I chose the thing you wanted.”
“I’m not relieved because I’m right.”
“Then why?”
“Because I’m afraid she’ll come back tomorrow and act like tonight never happened.”
Claire understood that fear immediately.
It was the first fear Ethan expressed that sounded like hers.
Marianne had always possessed a remarkable ability to return to normal first.
After an argument, she sent recipes.
After insulting Claire’s job, she asked about her commute.
After announcing that Claire’s pregnancy weight was “surprisingly manageable,” she arrived three days later with flowers and spoke as though no sentence had preceded the flowers.
Normalcy was one of Marianne’s weapons.
“I don’t want you making the report for me,” Claire said.
“I won’t.”
“I want to speak.”
“You should.”
“And if I decide not to say everything?”
Ethan hesitated.
“Then you decide.”
“Even if you think I’m wrong?”
“Yes.”
She studied him.
“You’re getting better at this.”
“I have a terrifying teacher.”
Claire did not smile.
He looked down.
“Bad timing.”
“Very.”
“Sorry.”
A minute later she said, “A little funny.”
He looked up.
She hated the gratitude in his eyes.
At one in the morning, Claire began the process of documenting what happened.
It was slower than she expected.
She had imagined telling the story once.
Instead there were details.
Where she had been standing.
Which hand Marianne used.
Where Noah’s head was.
Whether Claire had fallen.
Whether Marianne had threatened her.
Whether Claire believed Marianne intended to injure Noah.
That question stopped her.
Ethan sat beside her but did not answer.
Claire looked toward the bassinet.
“No,” she said finally. “I don’t think she wanted to hurt him.”
The admission made her feel disloyal to herself.
Then she understood that truth did not have to be useful.
Marianne had wanted Noah.
Marianne had been willing to hurt Claire while Claire held him.
Those were not the same as wanting to hurt the baby.
They were bad enough.
Claire said exactly that.
Later, after the house went quiet again, she changed out of the satin dress and put on one of Ethan’s old gray T-shirts.
She stood in the bathroom and looked at her face.
The bruise had spread.
Purple at the center.
Red along the edge.
An injury was strangely rude in the way it occupied a face.
It made every other expression look like commentary.
Claire touched the skin beneath her eye.
A memory came to her, not because she wanted it, but because the bruise reminded her of Marianne’s fingertip pressing beneath Claire’s eye during a family lunch two months after Noah was born.
“You’re so pale,” Marianne had said. “Are you eating?”
Claire had moved away.
Marianne had laughed.
“So jumpy.”
Claire had told Ethan later.
May you like
He had kissed her forehead and said, “She doesn’t understand personal space.”
At the time, the answer had sounded reasonable.
