Chapter 7
He stared at her.
“An apartment?”
“Yes.”
“For how long?”
“I don’t know.”
“Marina.”
Nell stirred.
Immediately, Marina shifted her weight and pressed one hand gently across the baby’s back.
The instinctive movement was so practiced that Adam felt, absurdly, excluded by it.
He had missed twenty days.
Not twenty ordinary days.
Twenty days in which his daughter had learned the smell of her mother.
Twenty days in which Marina had learned which cry meant hunger and which meant gas.
Twenty days in which Bernice knew more about Adam’s child than Adam did.
“I want to hold her,” he said.
Marina’s expression changed.
Not cruelly.
Just carefully.
“She just ate.”
“I know how to hold a baby.”
“You held her three times before you left.”
“That doesn’t mean I can’t hold my own daughter.”
Elise appeared behind Marina.
Marina glanced at her, then stepped aside.
“Wash your hands.”
Adam entered.
The inside of the duplex was modest and warm.
A lamp glowed beside a faded green sofa.
Baby blankets covered one armchair.
A stack of diapers sat beside the television.
On a side table stood Marina’s kettle.
That stupid kettle hit him almost harder than anything else.
It was pale blue.
He had bought it for her six Christmases ago.
At the time he had complained that she wanted an appliance as a gift.
She had laughed and told him she liked morning tea more than jewelry.
Now it sat in somebody else’s house.
Adam washed his hands.
When he returned, Marina carefully transferred Nell into his arms.
“Support her neck.”
“I know.”
Marina said nothing.
Nell squirmed.
Adam adjusted his grip.
The baby’s face wrinkled.
Then she began to cry.
“Hey,” he whispered. “Hey, Nellie. It’s Dad.”
The crying intensified.
Marina reached automatically.
Adam held on a second longer.
“I can settle her.”
Nell’s tiny body stiffened.
Marina’s voice remained gentle.
“Adam.”
He gave the baby back.
Within seconds, Nell quieted against her mother.
Adam looked away.
“That’s because she’s with you all day.”
“Yes.”
“You don’t have to say it like that.”
“Like what?”
He had no answer.
His eyes landed on the flowers.
He had brought them inside without realizing it.
“I got these for you.”
Marina looked at them.
“They’re beautiful.”
“You like roses.”
“I do.”
He waited for her to take them.
She did not.
Finally Elise reached over.
“I’ll put them in water.”
Adam felt embarrassed by how much that bothered him.