Chapter 6: What She Said at the Door
I turned around slowly.
Jess was still standing near the railing.
She wasn't looking at Ethan.
She was looking at me, and her expression had gone past discomfort into something rawer — something that looked, if I was reading it right, like it had been waiting a long time to surface.
"Say that again," I said.
"He told me you hadn't wanted Noah." Her voice was steady but her hands weren't.
"That the pregnancy was an accident and that you'd resented him for it.
That you were cold with the baby.
That you only kept him to have leverage."
I looked at my son.
Noah had his fist curled against my collarbone.
He was watching the porch light with the focused, solemn expression he always got when something bright caught his attention.
"Ethan," I said.
Ethan said nothing.
"Look at your son," I said.
"Look at him."
He looked.
"I went back to work six weeks after he was born because we had no savings left.
I nursed him through two ear infections and a respiratory virus without one night of full sleep.
I researched every formula brand for three weeks before I switched him because I was afraid of getting it wrong.
I have his pediatrician's number memorized.
I know which side he prefers to sleep on and which stuffed animal he reaches for when he's frightened and what his cry sounds like when he's hungry versus when he's in pain." My voice stayed even.
I needed it to stay even.
"And you told someone I didn't want him."
Ethan's jaw worked.
"I was trying to—"
"What?" I said.
"What were you trying to do?"
He didn't answer.
Jess took a short breath.
"I want you to know — if I had understood the actual situation, I wouldn't have—" She stopped.
Started again.
"I'm not trying to make myself look better here.
I'm just telling you what he said, because you deserve to know all of it.
Not the version he decides to give you."
My father put his hand on my shoulder briefly.
Not to guide me anywhere.
Just to be there.
"Thank you," I said to Jess.
And I meant it, which surprised me.
She nodded once.
I walked inside.
Diane was in the kitchen doorway.
She had followed us in at some point and she stood there with her arms at her sides and an expression I had not seen on her face before — not quite shame, but the first cousin of it.
The expression of someone who had watched a plan unravel faster than expected.
"I want the guest room key," I said to her.
"I'm staying there tonight with Noah.
We'll figure out the rest tomorrow."
"That room is—"
"I know who's been in it." I held out my hand.
"The key."
She looked past me toward the front door, toward where Ethan was still on the porch.
Then she reached into the kitchen drawer and placed the key in my palm.
I went upstairs.
I ran a warm bath for Noah, went through his whole routine — the one I had built piece by piece over eleven months — and got him settled.
He fell asleep within minutes, one hand open beside his face the way he always slept, trusting completely that the person in the room with him would keep him safe.
I sat on the edge of the bed in the dark and listened to him breathe.
My phone lit up on the mattress beside me.
It was a text from a number I didn't recognize.
*There's more you need to know.
About the job he says he lost.
May you like
Call me when you're ready.
— R*
