One Tuesday afternoon, I carried a banker’s box down the apartment stairs and had to stop halfway because the baby lodged a heel so sharply into my side I almost laughed. The hallway smelled like old radiator heat and somebody’s garlic dinner. I leaned against the wall, one hand on the box, one on my stomach.
“You and me,” I whispered. “We’re getting out.”
At home, Nathan moved through the weeks with absolute confidence.
He complained about city traffic. Asked if we had decided on a pediatrician. Kissed me absentmindedly in the kitchen while texting someone else under the table. Once, when I was loading the dishwasher, he came up behind me, slid a hand over my hip, and said, “I know I’ve been busy. Things will settle down after the baby.”
I nearly dropped a plate.
That was the part that kept shocking me—not the affair anymore, but the audacity of his ease. The way he could stand in the warm yellow light of our kitchen, smelling like expensive wool and hotel soap, and talk about the future as if he still belonged in it.
Then, on a Wednesday night in late November, he called me at 7:40 p.m. from the city.
His voice was too warm.