Chương 14
She had expected relief.
Instead she felt homesick while sitting inside her own home.
Leah appeared in the doorway.
“You don’t have to stay.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Why?”
“Because leaving every room to him is not the same as choosing where I live.”
Leah nodded.
They unpacked baby clothes.
At the bottom of one tote, Catherine found Michael’s charcoal sweater from the hospital. Leah must have picked it up after all.
She held it to her face before she could stop herself.
It smelled faintly of cedar and his cologne.
Leah turned away and began arranging diapers that did not need arranging.
Catherine folded the sweater and placed it in the bottom drawer of the dresser.
Michael’s mother arrived the next day.
Evelyn Harrison entered carrying a silver rattle that had belonged to Michael and an expression of controlled injury.
She kissed Catherine’s cheek.
“You look pale.”
“I gave birth eight days ago.”
“I know.”
Evelyn washed her hands and held Eleanor on the sofa. She was gentle with the baby, supporting the head carefully, speaking in the low musical voice she reserved for infants and expensive dogs.
“My beautiful girl,” she whispered. “You have your father’s brow.”
“She has a brow?”
“She does.”
Catherine poured tea.
Evelyn watched her over the baby’s cap.
“Michael says you won’t speak to him except about visits.”
“That’s mostly true.”
“He is falling apart.”
Catherine set the kettle down.
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“He made a terrible mistake.”
“He made several.”
“He told me everything.”
“No, he told you the version he can survive telling.”
Evelyn’s mouth tightened.
“You have every right to be angry. But marriage requires proportion.”
Catherine sat opposite her.
“What proportion would you recommend?”
“I’m not defending infidelity.”
“You’re about to.”
“I am defending the life you built.”
“Was it real?”
“Of course it was.”
“Parts of it.”
“All marriages have parts people hide.”
Catherine looked at the silver rattle in Evelyn’s handbag.
“Did Michael’s father have affairs?”
Evelyn’s eyes sharpened.
“That is not relevant.”
“It might be.”
“My marriage was my business.”
“And mine is yours?”
“I am trying to protect my son’s family.”
Catherine leaned back.
Evelyn continued, “He loves you. Anyone can see that.”
“I know.”
The answer unsettled her.
“Then why are you behaving as though nothing can be repaired?”
“I’m not behaving as though anything. I’m trying to understand what happened.”
“The public scandal will pass.”
“This is not about the public scandal.”
“Then don’t let Amber turn it into one.”
“Amber didn’t make Michael lie to me.”
“No, but she exploited his weakness.”
“He exploited hers too.”
Evelyn looked down at Eleanor.
Catherine watched the change in her face, the struggle between loyalty and recognition.
“He was under extraordinary pressure,” Evelyn said.
“So was I.”
“You are stronger than he is.”
The compliment landed like an accusation.
Catherine stood and took her daughter back.
“That has been everyone’s excuse for giving me less.”
Evelyn blinked.
“I did not mean—”
“I know.”
Catherine settled Eleanor against her shoulder.
“You should go.”
Evelyn gathered her handbag slowly.
At the door, she turned.
“When Michael was six, he broke a window with a baseball. He hid the ball under his bed and blamed the neighbor’s son. Even after we found the ball, he kept insisting someone had put it there.”
Catherine waited.
Evelyn looked toward the floor.
“His father laughed. Said the boy would make a good lawyer.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because sometimes we admire the wrong thing in children and spend years pretending we didn’t teach it to them.”
She left the silver rattle on the hall table.
The investigation lasted three weeks.
During that time, Michael saw Eleanor four times a week. The visits moved from supervised hours in the living room to short walks around the block with Catherine beside him.
He learned how to change a diaper without treating the tabs as engineering defects. He learned Eleanor hated being placed into the bassinet before her left arm went limp with sleep. He learned she settled when he hummed an off-key version of “Moon River.”
Catherine hated that he was good with her.
She had expected incompetence to simplify things.
Instead, Michael came to every visit early. He kept notes on feeding times. He washed bottles without being asked. When Eleanor spat milk onto his only clean dress shirt before a meeting with investigators, he laughed.
Catherine had not heard that laugh in months.
One afternoon, while they walked beneath budding trees on Burling Street, Michael pushed the stroller and said, “I started therapy.”
Catherine kept her eyes on the sidewalk.
“Good.”
“My therapist says I compartmentalize.”
“Did that surprise either of you?”
“No.”
They walked another half block.
A landscaping crew fed branches into a wood chipper. Michael waited until the noise faded.
“She also says I confuse providing with participating.”
Catherine looked at him.
“Do you agree?”
“I think I used money as evidence that I was present.”
“You did.”
“I thought if the house was paid for and the accounts were full and you could design whatever nursery you wanted, then I had done my part.”
“You argued about the wallpaper for three weeks.”
“It was eighty dollars a roll.”
“You just said whatever nursery I wanted.”
“I’m working on consistency.”
The corner of her mouth moved.
Michael saw it and smiled.
The smile disappeared when she looked away.
“The investigators asked whether you knew about Amber,” he said.
“What did you tell them?”
“The truth.”
“That I suspected?”
“Yes.”
“Did you tell them I asked you to remove her from our lives?”
“Yes.”
“Did you tell them you called me jealous?”
He looked down at the stroller.
“Yes.”
They stopped at the corner.
A cyclist ran the light and shouted at a taxi that had the right of way.
Michael said, “I don’t expect you to forgive me.”
May you like
“You keep doing things that suggest you do.”
“I expect the chance to become someone you could forgive.”
