Chapter 4
Miranda did not sleep.
Owen woke twice before midnight and once shortly after one, each time with the indignant certainty that he had been abandoned somewhere unfamiliar instead of lying three feet from her in the crib he had slept in since birth.
She fed him in the chair by the window, changed him beneath the dim amber light of the nightstand lamp, and walked slow circuits around the bedroom until his body softened against hers.
The guest room remained quiet across the hall.
Garrett did not come in.
That should have been what she wanted. She had told him to leave, then let him announce the guest room as though he were choosing exile rather than accepting it. Still, every time the floor settled beyond the bedroom door, Miranda looked up and waited for the handle to turn.
By two-thirty, Owen was asleep again, his lips parted around a sigh. Miranda lowered him into the crib and kept both hands beneath him for several seconds after his weight met the mattress. He flinched once, then settled with one fist beside his cheek.
She stood over him until the ache in her lower back forced her upright.
The YSL photograph remained open on her phone.
Miranda had stopped reading the comments, but she kept returning to the image itself.
Garrett holding the basket. Willa receiving it.
The polished black cellophane tied with gold ribbon, large enough that Garrett had needed both arms to support it.
She could make out the tops of several boxes arranged inside: perfume, lipstick, a cream-colored pouch with the initials stamped across it in black.
The basket looked ceremonial.
That was what bothered her most now. It had not passed quietly from one person to another in an empty conference room. Someone had announced Garrett’s name. People had watched him win. He had carried the prize across the room and chosen Willa in front of everyone who had once worked with Miranda.
No one had asked where his wife was.
Miranda set the phone facedown and went into the bathroom.
The pump parts still waited in the sink, cloudy with milk residue.
She washed them in water hotter than necessary and lined each piece on the drying mat in the order she preferred, flange, valve, membrane, connector, bottle.
Garrett always left them in a heap because he said they dried either way.
She stared at the neat row.
Five months ago, she would have corrected him with affection. She would have moved the parts into place and laughed when he accused her of running the kitchen like a laboratory. There had been comfort in knowing the better system and in knowing Garrett relied on her to create it.
Now the same habit looked different.
Miranda turned off the water and dried her hands.
The guest room door was open when she stepped into the hallway.
Garrett lay on top of the comforter in his T-shirt and jeans, one arm folded beneath his head. The lamp on the nightstand was still on, though his eyes were closed. His phone rested against his chest beneath his other hand.
For a moment, Miranda thought he was asleep. Then he spoke without moving.
“Is Owen okay?”
“He’s asleep.”
Garrett opened his eyes and sat up. A crease ran along one side of his face from the pillow, and his hair had flattened strangely near the crown. He looked uncomfortable and tired, which gave Miranda no satisfaction at all.
“What time is it?” he asked.
“Almost three.”
He glanced toward the phone in his hand and seemed surprised to find it there. “I must have fallen asleep.”
Miranda remained in the doorway. She had not come to speak to him. She had only been returning to bed, but leaving now would turn the moment into something deliberate, and she was too tired to decide what she wanted it to mean.
Garrett swung his feet to the floor. “Did you need help?”
The question landed badly enough that she nearly laughed.
“No.”
“I told you to bring him to me.”
“And I told you he’s asleep.”
Garrett rubbed both hands over his face, then rested his elbows on his knees. “I’m trying, Miranda.”
“You’re sitting in the guest room.”
“Because you told me to get out.”
“You announced you were sleeping here as though it were a punishment.”
His head lifted. “A punishment for who?”
“I don’t know. You looked disappointed when I didn’t stop you.”
Garrett stared at her, his exhaustion hardening into irritation. “You wanted me gone, and now you’re angry because I left.”
“I’m not angry that you left.”
“Then why are we doing this at three in the morning?”
Miranda looked toward the nursery wall between them, listening for any change in Owen’s breathing through the open bedroom door. “I’m not doing anything. I washed the pump.”
“Fine.”
The word came out clipped and final. Garrett stood and crossed to the dresser, where a framed photograph from their wedding sat beside a ceramic bowl filled with loose change and spare keys. He opened the top drawer, found it empty, then remembered this was not their bedroom and closed it again.
“I need clothes for tomorrow,” he said.
“You can get them now.”
“I don’t want to wake Owen.”
“He’s not in the closet.”
Garrett turned toward her. “Can you stop?”
“Stop what?”
“Talking to me like I’m stupid.”
Miranda felt the answer form before she had decided to say it. “Then stop pretending you don’t understand simple things.”
His face tightened. “I understand that you’re angry.”
“That’s the only part you understand because it’s the part inconveniencing you.”
“I understand why you’re angry.”
“No, you understand the list. Basket. Website. Willa. You can repeat the facts, but you still think the conclusion is ridiculous.”
Garrett glanced toward the hall again, lowering his voice. “I think the conclusion keeps changing.”
“It hasn’t changed once.”
“At first, you were upset because I didn’t bring you the basket. Then it was because Willa got your title. Then it was because somebody made a stupid joke online. Now apparently I’ve erased you from your entire life.”
Miranda felt herself go still.
There were moments in arguments when the other person accidentally revealed the version of events they had been carrying all along.
Garrett had been listening, but only for categories he could separate.
The basket belonged in one box. Her job belonged in another.
His friendship with Willa occupied a third.
He could dismiss each concern individually because he refused to see the line connecting them.
“You really think those are different things,” she said.
“They are different things.”
“No. They happened in the same room.”
“What does that even mean?”
“It means you walked into my workplace with the woman doing my job. You helped her run an event I wasn’t invited to attend. You watched everyone treat her like she belonged there more than I did, then you won something beautiful and gave that to her too.”
Garrett’s mouth opened, but Miranda continued before he could separate the pieces again.
“You gave her the basket because she wanted it. You stayed late because she needed help. You knew about her title because Dennis mentioned it to you. You talked to her about me because she asked. Every part of your day had room for Willa, and none of it had room for me until you remembered two brownies.”
“That is not fair.”
“You brought me leftovers.”
“I brought you what you asked for.”
“I asked you to come home.”
Garrett looked away.
The silence lasted long enough for Miranda to hear the faint mechanical hiss of the baby monitor from the bedroom. She should have stopped. Owen would wake again soon, and the anger had begun to settle into the heaviness behind her eyes that made every thought feel bruised.
Garrett picked up his phone from the bed. “I’m going to sleep.”
“You do that.”
He looked at her sharply. “What do you want me to say?”
Miranda folded her arms, then dropped them when the pressure hurt her breasts. “I don’t want another sentence you picked because you think it ends the argument.”
“I apologized.”
“Yes.”
“I offered to ask for the basket back.”
“No. You told me you would if I forced you, then explained why it would humiliate Willa.”
“Because it would.”
“And that mattered more to you.”
Garrett’s jaw shifted. “I am not going to agree with that.”
“You don’t have to. You already proved it.”
He stepped closer, stopping before he reached the doorway. “You are taking every imperfect thing I’ve done and arranging it into evidence that I don’t love you.”
“I haven’t said you don’t love me.”
“You keep saying I don’t see you, I don’t value you, I don’t think about you. What am I supposed to hear?”
“The words I’m saying.”
“I do think about you.”
“When?”
Garrett recoiled as though the question itself were cruel.
Miranda saw the hurt enter his face and knew she had found the place where he believed himself innocent.
Garrett thought about her in practical ways.
He remembered the brownies. He texted Claire.
He bought the detergent she liked when it was on sale and replaced the batteries in her car key before she noticed they were dying.
He loved her through maintenance, through the thousand small acts that allowed him to believe the central truth of their marriage could not be questioned by one afternoon.
Miranda had loved those things once.
She still did, which was worse.
Garrett reached past her and pulled the guest room door wider. “I’m not doing this anymore tonight.”
Miranda stepped back to let him close it.
His expression shifted when she moved, as though he had expected resistance. “We’ll talk tomorrow.”
“You’ll explain tomorrow.”
“I’ll talk.”
“You don’t listen when you think I’m wrong.”
“And you don’t listen unless I agree with you.”
The door remained open between them. Neither moved.
From the bedroom, Owen began to cry.
Miranda turned immediately. Garrett followed her into the hall, but she reached the crib first and lifted the baby against her shoulder. Owen’s face was hot and damp, his body rigid from waking too quickly.
“I’ve got him,” she whispered.