Chương 4
“Do you remember when Mom broke Dad’s record player?” Catherine asked.
Leah looked up. “Which time?”
“There was more than one?”
“The first one was accidental. The second one was because he played Sinatra during their argument about the mortgage.”
“I thought she hated Sinatra.”
“She hated that he always put music on when he wanted her to stop talking.”
Catherine watched Eleanor’s chest rise beneath the blanket.
Their mother had left their father when Catherine was nine and Leah was six. For years, Catherine had remembered only the slammed doors, their father’s bewilderment, and the months when cereal counted as dinner. As an adult, she had learned the quieter parts: the accounts her mother could not access, the decisions made without her, the way every complaint became proof that she was unstable.
Catherine had promised herself she would never create that kind of home.
She had confused avoiding conflict with preventing harm.
At seven twenty, the pediatrician signed Eleanor’s discharge. Lila brought a wheelchair for Catherine and another nurse carried the infant car seat, which Michael had installed three weeks earlier after watching two instructional videos and complaining that the straps were designed by sadists.
The memory arrived without permission.
Catherine almost asked Lila to wait.
Instead she called Ben.
Leah’s husband answered on the second ring.
“I’m awake,” he said quickly.
“You sound asleep.”
“I’m spiritually awake.”
Leah took the phone. “Bring the SUV. And the extra blankets. And don’t tell the boys anything yet.”
“They know a baby was born.”
“Nothing else.”
A pause.
“Is Catherine okay?”
Leah looked at her sister.
“No,” she said. “But she’s here.”
Michael waited outside the main entrance.
He stood beneath the covered drive beside his car, hands in his trouser pockets, rain blowing across the pavement behind him. Amber was gone.
Catherine saw him through the lobby windows before he saw her.
For a moment, he looked smaller than he had in the corridor. He was forty-two, but the hospital light deepened the shadows beneath his eyes and made his face look older. His hair was damp at the temples. He had buttoned his shirt.
Leah muttered something under her breath.
Lila stopped the wheelchair.
“Do you want to use another exit?”
Catherine considered it.
“No.”
They moved toward the doors.
Michael straightened when he saw the car seat.
“Is that her?”
Catherine said nothing.
He came closer, careful not to touch the wheelchair. “Can I see her face?”
Leah stepped between them.
“Leah, don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Make this worse.”
“You’re standing outside a hospital asking whether the baby in your wife’s car seat is your daughter.”
“I know she’s my daughter.”
“Then you could have tried being here when she arrived.”
Michael’s jaw tightened. “This is between Catherine and me.”
“No,” Catherine said. “It isn’t anymore.”
He looked at her.
The anger left his face so quickly that she almost doubted seeing it.
“Where are you going?”
“Not home.”
“Catherine, please. We should talk privately.”
“I’m not ready.”
“You don’t have all the facts.”
“I had all the facts I needed at three oh seven this morning.”
“I didn’t send that message.”
“You gave her your phone.”
“I was on another call.”
“At three in the morning?”
“It was Singapore. There was a time difference.”
“The Carson deal isn’t in Singapore.”
Michael glanced toward Leah and the nurses, then lowered his voice. “Not here.”
Catherine noticed the shift. It was the same one he used at restaurants when she asked about money, at parties when she disagreed with a story he was telling, and once in their own kitchen when she said Amber made her uncomfortable.
Not here meant not where anyone might hear the version of him she lived with.
“You were in a hotel,” Catherine said.
Michael’s eyes changed.
Leah turned toward him.
Catherine continued. “The garage camera was disabled before midnight.”
“That has nothing to do with Amber.”
“Then tell me what it has to do with.”
He looked past her toward the glass doors, where people came and went beneath umbrellas. A nurse pushed an elderly man in a wheelchair toward a waiting taxi. A child dragged a purple backpack across the floor.
“I had a meeting,” Michael said.
“With whom?”
“I signed a confidentiality agreement.”
Catherine almost laughed.
“You’re using a confidentiality agreement against your wife while she’s holding your newborn daughter.”
“I’m not using anything against you.”
“Who was at the meeting?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Was Amber there?”
Michael hesitated.
The delay was less than a second.
“Yes.”
Leah made a quiet sound.
Michael lifted both hands. “It was business.”
“Was she in your room?”
“We had a suite for meetings.”
“Did you sleep with her?”
“No.”
The answer came quickly.
Catherine waited.
Michael’s hands lowered.
“Not last night,” she said.
He looked at the car seat.
Rain blew beneath the awning and darkened one shoulder of his suit.
“Catherine.”
She felt the truth arrive before he spoke it. Not as a revelation. As a final piece fitting into a pattern she had spent months refusing to see.
“How long?” she asked.
“It isn’t what you think.”
“How long?”
He looked at Leah. “Can we not do this in front of your sister?”
Leah stepped closer. “You’re lucky she’s the one asking.”
Catherine’s body had begun to shake. The movement traveled from her thighs into her abdomen and up beneath her ribs. She pressed her palms against the wheelchair arms.
“Answer me.”
Michael closed his eyes briefly.
“Once,” he said. “It happened once.”
The sliding doors opened behind him, letting in the smell of rain and exhaust.
“When?”
“January.”
May you like
Catherine was seven months pregnant in January.
She remembered a Thursday when he came home after midnight and stood in the shower for nearly an hour. She had been awake in bed, eating dry cereal from a coffee mug because she could not sleep and did not want to walk downstairs again. He had kissed her forehead and said the board dinner had gone well.
