Chương 5
Emily stared at him.
“And you let me give birth without telling me.”
His eyes dropped.
“Yes.”
Something inside Emily became very quiet.
“Give her back.”
Daniel did.
Emily held Lucy and looked at her husband.
“Go home.”
“Emily.”
“Take my bag. Take the car seat. Go home.”
“I’m not leaving you here.”
“You’re not staying in this room.”
“I can wait outside.”
“Fine.”
“Can I come back when they discharge you?”
“I don’t know.”
Daniel nodded.
He picked up the overnight bag.
At the door, Emily said, “And Daniel?”
He turned.
“Throw the test away.”
“I already did.”
She looked at him.
“Of course you did.”
He left.
Emily stayed in the hospital that night.
Her blood pressure remained elevated, and her obstetrician preferred monitoring rather than sending her home into what the doctor called, with admirable restraint, “a stressful domestic situation.”
Emily appreciated the euphemism.
At two in the morning, Lucy woke hungry.
Emily fed her in the dim room while city light pressed pale rectangles against the windows.
The hallway was quieter.
A machine somewhere hummed.
Someone laughed softly at the nurses’ station.
Emily looked at her daughter.
She had spent months imagining motherhood as a division between before and after.
Before Lucy.
After Lucy.
It was not that simple.
All the previous versions of Emily had come with her.
Twenty-six-year-old Emily in Boston.
Twenty-eight-year-old Emily meeting Daniel at a friend’s birthday dinner.
Thirty-year-old Emily peeing on a pregnancy test in a grocery-store bathroom because she had not had the patience to drive home.
Every version was still here.
Margaret knew one of them now.
Daniel knew more.
Neither knew everything.
Emily wondered whether marriage was supposed to mean being fully known.
The thought irritated her.
It sounded like something printed on a pillow.
She burped Lucy.
The baby produced a surprisingly adult sound.
Emily smiled.
“Exactly.”
In the morning, Daniel brought coffee.
He did not enter.
Maria carried it in.
“He asked me to tell you it has one pump of vanilla.”
Emily stared at the cup.
“That’s manipulative.”
Maria nodded.
“Good coffee often is.”
Emily drank it anyway.
At eleven, her obstetrician discharged her again.
Daniel was waiting downstairs.
Emily nearly asked for someone else to drive her home.
Then she realized she had no one she wanted to call.
Her mother lived in Arizona and had undergone knee replacement six weeks earlier. Her older sister was in Minneapolis with three children and a husband currently traveling for work. Emily had friends, good ones, but calling them meant explaining.
She did not have the energy yet.
Daniel stood when she approached.
The replacement wheelchair stopped near him.
He looked at Emily.
“Hi.”
“Hi.”
He looked at Lucy.
“Hi.”
Emily almost rolled her eyes.
Instead she handed him the diaper bag.
“You can carry this.”
“Absolutely.”
The drive home took twenty-eight minutes.
They barely spoke.
Daniel asked if the temperature was okay.
Emily said yes.
At a red light, a man in the next car sang loudly with his windows down.
Emily watched him.
His whole body moved with the music.
She envied him with sudden unreasonable intensity.
Imagine having a Friday problem that involved nothing more complicated than traffic.
At home, Daniel carried the car seat upstairs.
Emily followed slowly.
Their townhouse looked exactly as they had left it.
A plate in the sink.
A stack of mail on the entry table.
One of Daniel’s shoes near the stairs because he had forgotten it there on Tuesday morning when Emily’s contractions began.
The ordinary mess almost made Emily cry.
She walked into the nursery.
Daniel had repaired the backward bassinet weeks ago.
A small stuffed rabbit sat on the shelf.
Margaret had bought that too.
Emily picked it up.
“What do you want me to do with her things?” Daniel asked from the doorway.
Emily looked at the rabbit.
“Nothing today.”
“Okay.”
She put Lucy down carefully.
Then she sat in the rocking chair.
Daniel remained near the door.
“Where are you sleeping?”
He hesitated.
“Guest room.”
“Okay.”
“If that’s what you want.”
“It is.”
He nodded.
Emily looked at him.
“Tell me something.”
“Anything.”
“Why did your mother start investigating me?”
Daniel was quiet.
“You know why.”
“No. I know what she found. I don’t know why she started.”
Daniel leaned against the doorframe.
“She thinks I was going to change the trust.”
Emily frowned.
“What trust?”
“My grandfather’s.”
She stared at him.
Daniel’s family money had always existed around them as weather. Present. Powerful. Rarely discussed accurately.
Daniel worked for Carter Holdings, a commercial real-estate company his grandfather had founded. Margaret had inherited shares. Daniel and his brother each held interests through family trusts.
Emily had never asked for specifics.
Money made Margaret stranger.
Emily preferred ignorance.
“What were you going to change?”
“Lucy’s beneficiary structure.”
“What does that have to do with me?”
“My mother thinks you got pregnant because of the trust.”
Emily laughed once.
“She genuinely believes I planned a pregnancy around estate documents I’ve never seen?”
“Yes.”
“That is almost flattering.”
“It isn’t.”
“No.”
Daniel rubbed the back of his neck.
“She wanted proof you were unfaithful. If Lucy wasn’t biologically mine, she thought she could block changes I was considering.”
Emily stared at him.
“Changes you were considering.”
“Yes.”
“Not changes I asked for.”
“No.”
“Did I even know about them?”
“No.”
“So your mother built an entire theory in which I seduced you, married you, waited three years, had another man’s baby, and somehow expected that baby to inherit money from your grandfather.”
Daniel looked exhausted.
“When you say it like that—”
“How else would anyone say it?”
“I don’t know.”
Emily stood too quickly.
Pain pulled through her hip.
Daniel stepped forward.
She put up a hand.
He stopped.
“Do not.”
“Okay.”
She steadied herself against the chair.
“Your family is insane.”
“Yes.”
“No. You say that like it’s charming.”
May you like
“I don’t think it’s charming.”
“You have said things like that for years. ‘My mother is impossible.’ ‘My family is insane.’ Like you’re talking about people who put ketchup on steak.”
