Chương 16
The room was too warm. Claire opened a window an inch while Helen arranged bottles in the kitchen and Lorraine complained about the quality of the dish towels.
Marcus assembled a portable bassinet without reading the instructions. He attached one side backward.
Claire watched him struggle for several minutes.
“Aren’t doctors supposed to be good at this?”
“Human bodies come assembled.”
Ethan crouched beside him. “You reversed the frame.”
“I was testing you.”
“No, you weren’t.”
Together, they corrected it.
The twins slept through the entire argument.
That night, Claire took the first feeding. Ethan took the second. Helen left at ten because Claire asked her to. Marcus and Lorraine went home before midnight.
At three in the morning, Claire woke on the couch to Benjamin crying in the bedroom.
Ethan stood beside the crib holding him stiffly.
“I fed him,” he whispered. “Changed him. He’s still upset.”
Claire took Benjamin and sat in the rocking chair.
The baby rooted against her gown.
“He’s hungry again.”
“That’s impossible.”
“He doesn’t care.”
Ethan warmed another bottle.
They moved around each other in the dim apartment with the awkward coordination of strangers sharing a small kitchen. The music Claire had once imagined playing during peaceful night feedings remained off. The only sound was the bottle warmer and Oliver breathing in the neighboring crib.
Ethan handed her the milk.
Benjamin drank greedily.
“He has your eyes,” Ethan said.
Claire looked up.
Fear crossed his face. He had spoken too quickly.
She examined Benjamin’s gray-blue eyes, though newborn color meant little.
“Maybe,” she said.
Ethan sat on the edge of the bed.
“I used to think resemblance was proof.”
Claire adjusted the bottle.
“And now?”
“Now I think I was looking for permission.”
“To love them?”
“To protect myself first.”
Benjamin’s hand closed around Claire’s finger.
Ethan watched.
“I don’t expect you to take me back,” he said.
“This is not the hour for that conversation.”
“I know.”
She gave him a tired look.
“Right.”
After the feeding, Ethan returned Benjamin to the crib. He kept one hand near the baby’s chest without touching.
Claire stood in the doorway.
“You can sleep,” she said.
“So can you.”
“I’m not sure I remember how.”
He looked toward the couch.
“Neither do I.”
The weeks that followed were not redemptive.
They were exhausting.
Benjamin developed reflux and screamed each evening between six and nine. Oliver refused bottles from Helen but accepted them from Marcus, who claimed professional competence until Oliver spit milk down his shirt.
Ethan returned to work and came to the apartment afterward. Some nights Claire let him stay. Other nights his presence tightened something inside her, and she asked him to leave.
He always left.
That mattered.
Helen attended counseling and stopped offering updates on her progress. She answered questions when Claire asked them and did not volunteer excuses. Once, she began saying, “I did what I thought was best,” then stopped herself.
“No,” she said. “I did what felt safest for me.”
Claire wrote the sentence down later because it was the first apology that had not tried to disguise itself.
Marcus introduced Claire to two cousins and postponed introducing her to the rest of the family. He said he wanted her to meet people rather than be presented as an event.
At Christmas, Claire brought the twins to Lorraine’s townhouse for one hour.
Helen was not invited.
The absence sat among them without being discussed. Lorraine served dry turkey, three kinds of potatoes, and a raisin cake no one admitted choosing.
Marcus stared at the cake.
Claire began laughing.
“What?” Lorraine demanded.
“Nothing.”
Marcus pushed the plate away. “Family trait.”
It was the first time either of them used the word without hesitation.
In January, Claire returned to the house she had shared with Ethan.
Not to move back.
She needed tax documents and warmer clothes. Ethan was at work, but he had left the porch light on.
The nursery remained exactly as before the birth. Two cribs stood against the quiet-fern wall. Their names were mounted above them in wooden letters.
BENJAMIN.
OLIVER.
On the dresser sat a framed copy of the paternity report.
Claire’s stomach tightened.
She picked it up.
Behind the report was a note in Ethan’s handwriting.
I printed this because I thought proof would make me feel safe. It did not. I am keeping it here until I understand why I needed paper more than I trusted you. Throw it away if you want.
Claire removed the report from the frame.
She tore it once, then again, reducing the percentages and signatures to uneven pieces.
The act gave her less satisfaction than expected.
She placed the empty frame facedown.
In the kitchen, she found a stack of therapy worksheets beside Ethan’s coffee maker. She did not read them. Privacy still belonged to him, even now.
She packed her clothes.
Before leaving, she stood in the garage beneath Richard’s old wind chime, which Ethan had repaired after they inherited it. The missing metal tube had been replaced with one slightly too long. Its note rang lower than the others.
Nothing matched perfectly.
It worked anyway.
Ethan came to the apartment that night.
Claire told him she had torn up the report.
“Okay,” he said.
“Are you angry?”
“No.”
“Relieved?”
“A little.”
“Why?”
“Because I hated that I framed it.”
“You wrote the note.”
“I wrote the note after staring at it for three weeks.”
Claire handed him Oliver.
The baby settled against his chest.
“I’m not ready to move home,” she said.
“I know.”
She let the phrase pass.
“I might never be.”
Ethan’s eyes lowered to Oliver’s curls.
“All right.”
“That doesn’t mean I’ve decided to leave.”
He looked up.
“Don’t turn that into hope too quickly.”
“I’m trying not to.”
Claire sat beside him.
“I love you,” she said.
May you like
His face tightened.
“I love the man who painted the nursery and rubbed my feet and knew I hated pulp in orange juice. I don’t know how to place that man beside the one in the hallway.”
