Chương 5
He approached slowly. June made a small sound and turned her face into Nora’s gown.
Ethan’s eyes filled.
Nora had seen him cry twice before. Once when his father died, and once when Aurelian’s first prototype started after months of failed tests. Both times he had turned away.
Now he did not.
“She has my hair,” he said.
“She has hair.”
He laughed once, quietly, and wiped beneath one eye with his thumb.
“Can I hold her?”
Nora looked toward the nurse. The nurse gave no opinion.
“Yes.”
Ethan washed his hands at the sink. He did it carefully, as though following instructions in a laboratory. When Nora passed June to him, his shoulders rose with fear.
“Support her head,” Nora said.
“I am.”
“A little more.”
“I’ve got her.”
His tone sharpened, then softened at once. “Sorry. I’ve got her.”
June opened her eyes. They were dark and unfocused. Ethan stared at her with a tenderness so naked that Nora had to look away.
For ten minutes, he was the man she had believed he might become.
He whispered nonsense to the baby. He counted her fingers. He touched the notch in her earlobe and smiled when she sneezed.
Then he said, “You froze the accounts.”
The nurse looked up.
Nora felt something inside her close.
“We agreed not to discuss that here.”
“I’m not discussing. I’m asking.”
“You should speak with Marianne.”
His face hardened. “You brought her into this?”
“She was already in it.”
“What does that mean?”
The nurse stepped forward. “Mr. Mercer, this visit will end if you continue.”
Ethan looked at her as though he had forgotten anyone else existed.
“This is my family.”
“This is a patient room,” the nurse said.
June began to fuss. Ethan bounced her too quickly.
“Give her to me,” Nora said.
“I can calm her.”
“Ethan.”
He held June for one more second.
That second changed the room.
Nora saw it in the nurse’s posture. Ethan saw it too. His mouth tightened, and he handed the baby back.
“I would never hurt her.”
“No one said you would.”
“You looked at me like—”
“Stop.”
He turned away, ran both hands through his hair, and faced the window.
“I had investors waiting in Bermuda,” he said. “The trip was not what you think.”
“You left with your mother.”
“She was introducing me to people.”
“Then why did you tell me it was her birthday trip?”
“Because every business conversation becomes an interrogation with you.”
Nora adjusted the blanket around June.
“I found the folder.”
His reflection in the window went still.
The nurse moved closer to the bed.
Ethan turned.
“What folder?”
“The one under your bottom desk drawer.”
He blinked once. That was all.
Then he smiled.
It was not a happy expression. It was the automatic charm he used when a restaurant lost his reservation.
“Nora, those are drafts.”
“My signature is on them.”
“You signed authorizations last year.”
“Not those.”
“You were taking medication. You may not remember every page.”
The sentence entered the room with the clean precision of a knife laid on a table.
Nora looked at him.
“You dated one of them while I was in the hospital.”
“You signed before.”
“The notary says otherwise.”
“I don’t know what you think you saw, but you need to slow down. You just gave birth. Your hormones are—”
“Leave.”
His eyes shifted to the nurse, then back to Nora.
“You are not taking my daughter from me because Marianne put ideas in your head.”
“Leave now.”
“I built our life.”
“You left it in a desk drawer.”
Security arrived before he reached the hallway.
He did not shout. That would have been easier. He stood by the door and looked at June as though Nora had stolen something from him.
“I came back,” he said.
Nora said nothing.
After he left, she vomited into a plastic basin.
The nurse held her hair while June slept in the clear hospital bassinet.
At home, the locks had been changed by a licensed locksmith whose invoice Marianne kept. The house belonged to Nora’s trust, but Ethan had lived there for six years, which meant the question of access could not be settled by a dead bolt alone. Marianne filed for temporary exclusive use based on Nora’s medical condition, the disputed financial activity, and Ethan’s voluntary departure immediately before the birth.
She warned Nora that a judge might not view the facts as emotionally as they did.
“Judges have seen people behave badly before,” she said. “Bad husbands still have rights. Angry wives still have obligations. We need evidence, not adjectives.”
Nora came home with June on a gray afternoon three days after the birth. Elena drove. Marianne followed with the documents. A hospital aide checked the car seat twice, frowned at Ethan’s expensive installation, and corrected the angle with a folded towel.
The nursery looked exactly as Nora had left it.
That hurt more than she expected.
The framed ultrasound photographs still hung straight. Ethan’s unopened parenting book remained on the shelf, a receipt marking page twelve. On the changing table sat a stuffed rabbit Diane had ordered from Paris and presented at the baby shower as though she had commissioned it from a royal workshop.
Nora placed it in the closet.
Then she took it out again.
The rabbit had done nothing.
For the first week, time broke into feedings, diapers, medication, and brief periods of sleep that ended before they felt real. Nora’s body belonged to recovery and to June. Legal documents arrived through secure email, but she could read only a few pages before words blurred.
Marianne hired a forensic accountant named Leonard Price, who wore bright socks and apologized whenever he asked a question involving money.
“I’m sorry, but did you personally approve the transfer dated January ninth?”
“No.”
“I’m sorry, did you ever authorize Ethan to pledge trust assets as collateral?”
“No.”
May you like
“I’m sorry, is this your electronic signature?”
“It looks like it.”
