Chapter 8
“You look tired,” he said.
Marina almost smiled.
“I had a baby twenty-three days ago.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
There was no sharpness in the question.
That was worse.
Adam lowered his voice.
“Bernice told me about the fever.”
Marina’s hand paused against Nell’s back.
“You called five times.”
“Yes.”
“My phone died.”
“I know.”
“I was working.”
Marina looked at him.
It was the first moment since he entered that she held his gaze for more than a second.
Adam realized she knew.
He did not know how much.
But she knew.
His mouth went dry.
“Marina—”
“I don’t want to discuss Savannah while I’m holding Nell.”
There it was.
Not screamed.
Not thrown at him.
Just placed between them like an object whose shape no longer needed explaining.
Adam stared at her.
“How long have you known?”
“I knew before you left.”
“What?”
“I knew there was someone.”
“You never said anything.”
“I asked you if there was.”
Adam remembered.
Two weeks before Nell was born.
Marina had been standing in their bedroom folding tiny sleepers.
Without looking at him, she had said, “Are you seeing someone?”
He had laughed.
Actually laughed.
He had kissed the top of her head and said, “You’re exhausted.”
He could still see the little yellow sleeper in her hands.
“I asked twice,” Marina said.
Adam sat slowly on the edge of the sofa.
“How did you find out?”
“I didn’t need a detective, Adam.”
“I never said you did.”
“No. You just started showering immediately after certain dinners. You began keeping your phone facedown. You suddenly cared whether you looked old in photographs. You changed the password you’d used for six years.”
Her voice stayed quiet.
“And one night Savannah called while you were asleep.”
Adam closed his eyes briefly.
“I didn’t answer. I just saw her name.”
“Why didn’t you confront me?”
“I was thirty-seven weeks pregnant.”
The simplicity of it silenced him.
“I was sleeping in twenty-minute pieces. My pelvis hurt. My ankles were swollen. I was terrified of labor. Then Nell turned breech, and suddenly I was scheduling surgery.”
Marina looked down at the baby.
“I didn’t have the energy to investigate my husband.”
Adam leaned forward.
“It wasn’t supposed to become—”
“Don’t.”
His head lifted.
“Please don’t make me listen to the version where it somehow happened around you.”
He sat back.
Nell made a tiny sound in her sleep.