Chương 2
“It’s secure.”
“In the Bahamas.”
“Yes.”
“You’re sending our five-month-old baby to the Bahamas.”
“Temporarily.”
“With who?”
“My father is already there.”
“Your father is seventy.”
“He has staff.”
“He has a housekeeper and a driver.”
“And a nurse.”
Claire’s fingers stopped moving on Noah’s back.
“A nurse.”
Ethan said nothing.
“You hired a nurse?”
He looked irritated now, as if her questions were clerical delays in an otherwise completed process.
“Someone will be with him around the clock.”
“Someone.”
“Claire.”
“No. Tell me her name.”
“It’s not relevant.”
“You hired a stranger to take my baby out of the country, and her name isn’t relevant?”
His gaze flicked toward the hall.
That was the first time she saw nervousness in him.
Not guilt.
Not shame.
Nervousness.
Someone else was coming.
Claire backed half a step away from the island.
“Who’s coming here?”
“No one.”
“You just looked at the door.”
“I looked at the time.”
“Who’s coming?”
“Stop doing this.”
“Doing what?”
“Turning everything into evidence.”
The sentence hit somewhere old.
Claire had heard versions of it for years.
When she asked why he had lied about lunch with an ex-girlfriend, she was turning nothing into evidence. When she asked why he had changed the password on one of their investment accounts, she was treating their marriage like an investigation. When she asked why his mother had stopped speaking to her for three months after their wedding, Claire was obsessed with hidden meanings.
She had apologized so many times for noticing things.
Noah sighed.
His cheek shifted against her collarbone.
Claire looked down and saw one dark eyelash resting on the curve of his cheek. A little milk stain had dried near the collar of his pale-blue onesie. She had meant to change him before dinner and forgotten.
A ridiculous wave of guilt moved through her.
She had forgotten to change his shirt.
Ethan had arranged to remove him from the country.
And she was thinking about laundry.
“Give me my passport,” she said.
“You don’t need it.”
“It belongs to me.”
“I said you don’t need it.”
A woman’s voice came from behind Ethan.
“Arrangements with whose permission?”
Ethan went still.
Claire did not.
Her head turned sharply enough that Noah stirred.
Margaret Bennett stood in the dining-room doorway.
She wore a burgundy dress Claire had seen once before at a hospital fundraiser, fitted without being showy, with black heels and a narrow gold bracelet at one wrist. Her silver-blonde hair was cut in the same precise bob she had worn for at least fifteen years. She carried no purse. No coat. Nothing that explained why she was there.
Margaret’s expression was calm.
That frightened Claire too.
Ethan straightened.
“Mom.”
Margaret walked into the kitchen without hurrying.
The small clicks of her heels on the hardwood stopped when she reached the marble.
Her eyes went first to Claire, then Noah, then the diaper bag on the floor, and finally the passport wallet.
She did not ask what was happening.
She looked as if she had arrived already knowing enough to be angry.
“Mom, stay out of this,” Ethan said. “Claire agreed weeks ago.”
Claire’s disbelief was so clean that for a moment it pushed out fear.
“I what?”
Ethan did not look at her.
Margaret did.
“Did you?”
“No.”
“Claire—”
“I never agreed to anything.”
Ethan closed his eyes for half a second.
When he opened them, he crossed around the island.
Claire’s body tensed.
He stopped before he reached her.
For the first time since he had thrown down the bag, his face changed when he looked at Noah.
The hardness loosened.
Only slightly.
Ethan lifted one hand.
Claire almost stepped back, but he did not reach for the baby. He extended one finger toward Noah’s loose fist and touched the tiny knuckles.
Noah’s hand opened reflexively.
Then his fingers curled around Ethan’s.
Ethan stopped breathing for a beat.
It was the expression Claire had been waiting five months to see.
Not love—she knew he loved Noah. She had seen him walk the hall at three in the morning with the baby pressed to his shoulder, whispering nonsense about baseball statistics because he could never remember lullabies. She had seen him cry once, silently, after Noah’s first laugh.
This was something else.
Conflict.
A crack.
His thumb moved once against Noah’s hand.
Then Claire turned the baby gently away.
Ethan’s finger slipped free.
“I never agreed to anything,” she repeated.
Margaret reached for the passport wallet.
Ethan reacted too late.
His mother picked it up, opened it, and examined the contents.
She did not bother hiding her disgust.
“Then explain,” Margaret said, looking directly at her son, “why her signature was forged.”
Ethan’s face emptied.
Claire forgot to breathe.
The room did not explode.
No one screamed.
Nothing broke.
Noah made a soft swallowing noise in his sleep.
And because of that ordinary little sound, Claire would remember the next several seconds with unbearable clarity for the rest of her life.
Ethan looked at Margaret.
Then at the wallet.
Then, finally, at Claire.
“Where did you get that?”
Margaret’s eyebrows lifted.
It was almost funny.
Not because anything was funny, but because Ethan had asked the wrong question.
Claire saw that he knew it too.
Margaret closed the wallet.
“Interesting.”
“Mom.”
“You didn’t ask what signature.”
Ethan’s nostrils flared.
Claire stepped closer.
“What signature?”
Neither of them answered.
Her voice sharpened.
“What signature?”
Margaret held out the wallet.
Claire did not take it immediately. Noah was still against her chest, and she suddenly hated the idea of touching anything Ethan had prepared.
“What is it?” she asked.
“There’s a consent document behind the passports.”
“For what?”
Margaret looked at Ethan once before answering.
“For international travel.”
Claire stared at her.
“A child-travel consent form?”
“Yes.”
“With my signature?”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t sign anything.”
“I know.”
Ethan rubbed his forehead.
“Can we stop performing for ten seconds?”
Margaret turned slowly toward him.
May you like
“Performing?”
“This is a family issue.”
