Chương 1
"Margaret Hale kicked Emily’s ivory suitcase hard enough to send it skidding across the walnut floor, and the corner struck the stone fireplace bench with a crack that made Emily fold herself over her newborn before she even understood what had happened.
“Take that baby and get out—Daniel never wanted either of you.”
For half a second, nothing in the room moved except the fire and the snow beating itself against the black windows.
Emily sat barefoot at the end of the cream sofa, one hand spread across the powder-blue blanket wrapped around her son’s back. The baby gave a small sleeping grunt against her chest. She tightened her arm beneath his head and stared at the suitcase.
She had packed it herself three hours earlier.
Not because she had intended to leave.
Margaret had told her Daniel wanted her gone, and Emily had packed because there were moments, after twelve days of almost no sleep, when fear could make even an absurd thing seem temporarily reasonable.
Now a sleeve of her pale champagne knit dress had slipped down her wrist. She pulled it back with trembling fingers.
Margaret pointed toward the penthouse door.
“Well?”
Emily looked up.
Her eyes were red from exhaustion before Margaret had arrived. They were wetter now, though the tears had not fallen.
“He told me this was our home.”
Margaret’s mouth tightened.
“He tells people what keeps them calm.”
The words landed harder than the suitcase had.
Emily felt the baby breathe.
In.
Out.
A faint warm puff through the blanket.
She concentrated on that because everything else had become unreliable: her body, her judgment, the amount of sleep she thought she had gotten, the order of conversations, whether she had eaten lunch, whether Daniel had really said what she remembered him saying.
Their son had been born three weeks early after a labor that ended in an emergency cesarean section and forty-one hours in the hospital. Emily had spent twelve days afterward waking to sounds that sometimes existed and sometimes did not.
The bassinet stood six feet away beside the sofa.
Her phone lay facedown on the silver tray near Margaret’s elbow.
Emily had put it there when Margaret arrived because the baby had finally fallen asleep and she had wanted both hands free to accept the tea Margaret said she had brought.
There had been no tea.
Margaret had entered carrying the navy baby bag that had been left downstairs with the concierge. She had set it beside the bassinet and asked Emily, in a voice so calm that Emily had needed several seconds to understand the words, whether she preferred the airport hotel or one near the hospital.
Emily had laughed.
Not because it was funny.
Because she thought she had misheard.
Margaret had not laughed with her.
Then she had said Daniel had asked her to handle an uncomfortable family matter.
Emily had packed.
She hated herself a little for that now.
Margaret bent and picked up Emily’s phone from the tray.
“Give me that.”
Emily heard her own voice come out thinner than she wanted.
Margaret glanced at the screen.
“You don’t need another hysterical phone call.”
“I’m not hysterical.”
“No. You’re exhausted. There’s a difference.”
Emily stood carefully.
Her incision pulled beneath the dress.
The room tipped, just slightly.
She steadied herself against the sofa without loosening her grip on the baby.
“Give me my phone.”
Margaret held it out.
For one hopeful second Emily thought she was going to comply.
Then the penthouse door opened.
Cold air pushed through the entry hall.
Daniel stepped inside with snow melting in his dark brown hair and on the shoulders of his light blue dress shirt. He had no coat. He had apparently taken it off downstairs or abandoned it somewhere in his rush up from the lobby.
His eyes went first to Emily.
Then the baby.
Then the suitcase against the fireplace.
The expression on his face altered so quietly that Emily might not have noticed it before the last month. Marriage had taught her the difference between Daniel being annoyed, Daniel being angry, and Daniel becoming frighteningly calm.
He looked at his mother.
“What did you do?”
Margaret lowered Emily’s phone.
“What you should have done before this became humiliating.”
Daniel walked into the room.
“Give Emily her phone.”
Margaret gave a short, incredulous laugh.
“This is exactly the problem. You’re behaving like a child.”
“Her phone.”
The baby shifted.
Daniel stopped several feet away rather than coming directly toward Emily.
That tiny restraint mattered.
Emily had spent the first week after the hospital recoiling from people who reached for the baby without asking. Nurses, Daniel, her own sister on FaceTime when she joked about flying in and stealing him for cuddles.
She knew nobody meant anything by it.
Her body did.
Margaret placed the phone back on the tray.
“There. Is everyone satisfied?”
“No.”
Daniel stepped between his mother and the sofa.
Margaret’s gaze dropped to his bare feet.
Emily noticed then that he was wearing socks but no shoes.
A ridiculous detail.
She almost laughed again.
He must have run upstairs so quickly he had left his wet shoes with the concierge.
Daniel looked at the suitcase.
“Did she kick that?”
Margaret’s gold brooch caught the light when she turned.
“Oh, for God’s sake.”
“Did you?”
“It was in the middle of the room.”
Emily spoke before she could lose the nerve.
“She kicked it.”
Daniel nodded once.
Not at Margaret.
At Emily.
“I believe you.”
Something cracked behind Emily’s ribs.
She had not realized until then that she had expected him not to.
Margaret folded her arms.
“Daniel, you have no idea what she’s been saying.”
“I know exactly what you’ve been saying.”
“You weren’t here.”
“I heard enough downstairs.”
Margaret went still.
Emily looked at him.
“What?”
Daniel’s eyes flicked toward the doorway.
Only then did Emily hear the elevator chime beyond the private entry hall.
May you like
Margaret heard it too.
“What did you do?”
