Chương 12
“Ready?” he asked.
“No.”
He nodded. “Me neither.”
They left anyway.
Marcus’s aunt Lorraine owned a cassette player.
She also owned every photograph Isaiah had ever taken, including blurred pictures of parking lots and three nearly identical images of a burnt Thanksgiving turkey.
Lorraine lived in a townhouse filled with plants and furniture protected by crocheted covers. She opened the door before Marcus knocked, pulled him into a hug, then held Claire at arm’s length.
Lorraine was seventy, silver-haired, and narrow as a ruler. Her eyes moved over Claire’s face with uncomfortable precision.
“That man had no sense,” she said.
Claire did not know whether she meant Isaiah, Marcus, Richard, or Ethan.
“Come inside.”
Marcus had told her about the test. He had not told her everything about the birth.
Over tea, Lorraine examined the photographs from Helen’s box.
“I remember this coat,” she said, touching Isaiah’s sleeve in one picture. “He thought it made him look sophisticated. It made him look unemployed.”
Marcus leaned back. “He was unemployed.”
“That was the problem.”
Lorraine knew Helen only as the woman Isaiah had loved before medical school ended. She had never met her.
“He came home one Christmas so miserable I wanted to slap him,” Lorraine said. “Wouldn’t eat. Wouldn’t speak. Then he got drunk on two glasses of wine and told me she was pregnant with another man’s baby.”
“Did he believe it?” Claire asked.
“No.”
“Did you tell him to keep trying?”
“I told him not to harass a married woman who had asked him to leave her alone.”
Claire looked down at her tea.
Lorraine’s voice softened. “We make decisions with the facts people give us. Sometimes the facts are poison.”
They played the cassette.
Isaiah’s voice filled the living room beneath a layer of static.
He sounded younger than Claire expected. Nervous. He began by complaining that written letters gave Helen too much opportunity to misunderstand his tone. Then he misunderstood his own tone repeatedly, stopping and starting again.
Helen, I’m not asking you to promise me anything. I’m asking you not to make the child disappear from my life before either of us knows the truth.
Claire closed her eyes.
On the tape, Isaiah paced. His footsteps moved closer and farther from the recorder.
He said he had bought a secondhand crib and then admitted he had no apartment large enough to hold it. He laughed once at himself. He described a residency schedule that sounded impossible. He said he was scared.
Near the end, his voice became quiet.
If she is Richard’s, I will leave you alone. If she is mine and you choose him, I will still leave you alone if that is what keeps her safe. But don’t tell me blood does not matter while using blood to decide I have no place.
The tape clicked off.
No one spoke.
Lorraine folded the crocheted edge of the armrest between her fingers.
“He never sent that,” she said.
“How do you know?” Marcus asked.
“Because he gave it to me to mail, then came back the next morning and took it.”
“Why?”
“He said Helen had made her decision.”
Claire looked at the cassette player.
Isaiah had not been robbed of every opportunity. He had surrendered some.
It did not make Helen’s lie smaller. It made the past more human and therefore more painful. There was no single villain large enough to hold all the loss.
Lorraine stood and carried the cups to the kitchen.
“I’m angry with him,” Marcus said.
Claire nodded.
“I’ve been waiting my whole life to be angry with him about something he can’t interrupt.”
“Does it help?”
“No.”
“Good.”
Marcus looked at her.
“I didn’t want it to help you before it helped me.”
“That’s ugly.”
“Yes.”
“Also fair.”
They sat in silence while Lorraine ran water in the kitchen.
When she returned, she handed Claire a small spiral notebook.
“Isaiah wrote things down when he couldn’t sleep,” she said. “Most of it is complaints about work. There are three pages about Helen.”
Claire did not take it.
“Was he cruel?”
“No.”
“Did he mention me?”
“Not by name.”
Claire accepted the notebook.
Lorraine’s fingers remained on it for a moment.
“You are not evidence,” she said. “Do you understand?”
Claire’s throat tightened.
“I’m trying to.”
Benjamin stopped breathing two nights later.
Claire was holding Oliver when the alarm sounded from the neighboring incubator. Mara moved first. Another nurse lifted Oliver from Claire’s chest and returned him to safety while the team gathered around Benjamin.
Claire stood without remembering to protect her incision.
Someone told her to sit.
She could not see Benjamin through the bodies.
Dr. Shah arrived at a run, issuing instructions in a voice that remained calm enough to make the emergency more frightening. A respiratory therapist adjusted equipment. Mara’s hand moved rhythmically near Benjamin’s tiny chest.
Claire backed into the wall.
Ethan entered the unit at the far end, having arrived for his evening visit. A nurse stopped him from approaching.
“What happened?” he asked.
No one answered.
He saw Claire.
For a second, his face took on the same panic it had worn on the night of the birth. Claire watched the old reflex return: the need to move, demand, control, accuse someone of withholding information.
His shoulders rose.
Then he stopped.
He stepped behind the line and lowered his hands.
“Tell me where to stand,” he said.
The nurse pointed toward the family room.
Ethan went.
Benjamin began breathing again after several minutes that Claire could never measure accurately. Dr. Shah later explained that premature infants could have episodes, but this one was more severe. They would watch him closely and adjust support.
Claire heard fragments.
She sat in the consultation room with a blanket around her shoulders. Ethan occupied the chair across from her but did not speak.
His hands shook.
Claire’s did not.
May you like
She stared at a stain on the carpet shaped like a small country.
“I thought he died,” she said.
