Chương 2
“I need to know whether I work here tomorrow.”
“You do.”
“And next week?”
Daniel looked at her.
“That depends on whether you keep doing your job.”
Her eyes changed—not dramatically, but enough. Fear retreated and left something firmer behind.
“I was doing my job tonight.”
“I heard them crying.”
“They had been crying for seven minutes.”
“You timed it?”
“I time everything with them.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“It is an answer. You just don’t like it.”
Daniel stared at her. People did not usually speak to him that way in his home or anywhere else. At work, disagreements arrived softened by prepared documents and phrases such as with respect. Elise stood between two cribs in a wrinkled nightdress with red marker on her rubber gloves and no apparent interest in preserving his comfort.
Behind her, Rosie made a complaining sound.
Elise glanced toward the crib. “They started crying when I stopped the puppet show to warm their bottles. Then the microwave woke up the entire building with its cheerful little song. I put on the headphones because the baby monitor runs through them and because your house manager told me not to play nursery sounds through the speaker after midnight.”
“Mrs. Vale told you to wear those?”
“She told me to find a quiet solution. This was my quiet solution.”
Daniel looked at the headphones. They were enormous, the kind used by recording engineers, and clearly not designed for anyone kneeling in a nursery.
Elise rubbed one wrist where the rubber glove had left a red line.
“You came in while I was trying to get them laughing again,” she said. “That’s all.”
Daniel’s gaze went to the clock.
2:04.
The door remained open behind him. Cold hallway light cut a pale shape across the rug. He had not been inside the nursery after two in the morning since Rebecca’s last week at home. Staff handled nighttime feedings. He listened through the monitor from his bedroom and came when the crying lasted long enough to frighten him.
He had never admitted to himself that he waited.
“Why didn’t you call me?” he asked.
“I did.”
His jaw tightened. “No, you didn’t.”
Elise reached carefully toward the dresser and picked up her phone. The screen showed three unanswered calls.
Daniel took his own phone from his trouser pocket. It was on silent. There were nineteen other notifications beneath her name: messages from London, a calendar change, two missed calls from his chief operating officer, an alert about Asian markets.
Elise turned her phone facedown.
“I know you said emergencies only after midnight.”
“This wasn’t an emergency.”
“No,” she said. “It was two babies having a terrible night.”
The distinction unsettled him more than criticism would have.
Maisie began sucking two fingers. Rosie lowered herself to her mattress and reached for the cream teddy bear lying near the crib rail. Elise took it first, checked the stitching, then placed it beside her.
Daniel noticed the movement. “What was wrong with it?”
“Loose thread.”
“I don’t see one.”
“I cut it earlier.”
“Then why check again?”
Elise gave him a tired look. “Because babies are creative.”
Rosie rolled toward the bear and pressed her cheek against it.
Daniel set the pink teddy on the dresser. He did it too quickly, and the bear fell sideways against the digital clock. The clock tilted but remained upright.
“I shouldn’t have said what I said.”
Elise folded the yellow gloves together.
“No,” she said.
He waited.
That was apparently the entire response.
Daniel looked toward the cribs. The twins were quieter now. Their breathing came in uneven little pulls, broken by the occasional leftover giggle.
“I heard screaming.”
“They’re babies.”
“It sounded wrong.”
“It sounded loud.”
“You don’t know what I heard.”
Elise’s expression softened, which irritated him.
He turned toward the window. His reflection floated over the city: black shirt open at the collar, hair disordered, face drawn from too little sleep and too much work. Rebecca used to say anger made him look more rested than he was. She had meant it as a joke. Toward the end, he had stopped laughing at most of her jokes because he was always answering something.
Behind him, Elise lifted Maisie from the crib.
The baby made a low, exhausted protest. Elise tucked her against one shoulder and moved with a slow, practiced sway. No bouncing, no exaggerated hush. Just the quiet shift of weight from one bare foot to the other.
Daniel watched in the window’s reflection.
“Give her to me,” he said.
Elise paused.
“I can hold my own daughter.”
“I didn’t say you couldn’t.”
“You hesitated.”
“I was deciding whether you meant it.”
Daniel turned.
She brought Maisie to him, but she did not immediately let go. She adjusted the baby’s head against his chest and guided his forearm beneath her legs.
“Support her here.”
“I know.”
“All right.”
“I have held her before.”
Elise released the baby. “I know.”
Maisie stirred at the tension in his voice. Daniel lowered it without being told.
Her head fit beneath his chin. She smelled like warm milk and the lavender detergent Rebecca had chosen. Daniel had once complained that it made the entire apartment smell like an expensive candle store. Rebecca had bought three more bottles.
He had not changed the brand.
Maisie opened her eyes and stared at the dark space between the buttons of his shirt.
Daniel touched the back of her head with two fingers.
“I’m not leaving,” he murmured, though he was not sure whether he meant the room, the apartment, or something larger he did not yet know how to promise.
Elise settled Rosie, switched off the brighter overhead light, and left only the bedside lamp. She moved the tall giraffe away from the window because its shadow stretched across the crib.
Daniel watched her.
“Does that bother them?”
“It bothers me.”
“Why?”
May you like
“At two in the morning, that giraffe looks like it has opinions.”
A sound escaped Daniel before he could stop it. Not laughter exactly, but close enough that Elise glanced at him.
