Chapter 4 #4
Garrett closed his eyes briefly. “That is not an insult.”
“It is when you use it to disqualify everything I see.”
“I am not disqualifying you.” His hand moved in a slow circle on Owen’s back, the same motion he used when he wanted to appear calm.
“You just explained my entire reaction as jealousy.”
“Because jealousy is part of it.”
The certainty in his voice scraped away the last of her restraint. Miranda crossed the kitchen and picked up his phone from the counter.
Garrett stood so quickly that Owen startled awake.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
Miranda held the phone out to him instead of looking at the screen. “Unlock it.”
His face changed. Not guilt, exactly. Offense came first, followed by disbelief that she had forced the question into something physical.
“No.”
Miranda kept her eyes on the phone in her hand.
“Why not?”
“Because I’m not handing over my phone every time you decide I’m lying.”
“I didn’t say you were lying.”
Garrett’s jaw shifted. Owen had gone still against his chest, sensing something in the air the way infants do, his small face turned outward toward the room.
“You’re asking me to prove who contacted me.”
“Yes.”
A beat passed. The television threw pale light across the side of Garrett’s face.
“That is the same thing.”
Owen began to fuss between them. Garrett adjusted him with one hand while keeping the other extended toward the phone.
“Give it back,” he said.
Miranda looked down at the device. The black screen reflected a pale distortion of her face, hair uncombed, skin marked by another broken night.
She could have pressed the side button and watched the notifications appear.
She could have raised it toward Garrett’s face and let the phone open if the angle caught him correctly.
She did neither.
Miranda placed it on the table between them. “You would rather make this about privacy than let me see who contacted you.”
“I would rather not have a marriage where I’m required to submit evidence because you’re angry.”
“You already offered me the phone last night.”
“That was before I realized nothing in it would satisfy you.”
The sentence landed with more force than Garrett seemed to expect. Miranda looked at him, and something in her expression made him glance away.
Owen’s fussing sharpened into a cry. Garrett began swaying automatically, but the baby twisted toward Miranda, one hand opening and closing near the edge of her shirt.
“He’s hungry now,” Garrett said.
Miranda took Owen without answering. Their hands brushed during the transfer, Garrett’s fingers warm against her forearm, and the familiar contact sent a small, unwanted ache through her.
She carried the baby upstairs.
Garrett followed as far as the bottom of the staircase. “Miranda.”
She did not stop. Owen’s crying filled the narrow stairwell, giving her a reason not to answer and a rhythm for each step.
In the bedroom, she sat in the chair by the window and lifted her shirt. Owen latched with frantic relief, his hands pressing against her skin while his breathing gradually slowed.
A minute later, Garrett appeared in the doorway.
Miranda did not look at him. She focused on the soft movement of Owen’s jaw and the faint warmth of morning beginning to gather behind the curtains.
“It was Willa,” Garrett said.
The admission should have felt like victory. Instead, Miranda felt only tired.
“What did she want?”
“She said she was sorry if the basket caused trouble.”
Miranda lifted her eyes. “How does she know it caused trouble?”
Garrett leaned one shoulder against the doorframe. “I told her we had an argument.”
“When?”
“Last night.”
The answer entered Miranda slowly, rearranging the hours she had spent alone in this room while Garrett sat across the hall with his phone on his chest.
“You talked to her after you left the bedroom.”
“I texted her.”
“What did you say?”
“That you were upset about the basket and the pictures.” Garrett rubbed one hand over the back of his neck. “I asked her not to message me for a while because it was making things worse.”
Miranda looked back at Owen. A small drop of milk had gathered near the corner of his mouth, and she wiped it away with her thumb.
“And what did she say?”
“She said she understood.”
“That’s all?”
“No.” Garrett’s hesitation stretched just long enough to matter. “She said she felt terrible and that she never would have accepted it if she knew you wanted it.”
Miranda laughed softly, and Owen paused at the vibration before continuing to feed. “How gracious.”
“She was trying to be considerate.”
“She was trying to make herself innocent.”
Owen had stopped feeding. Miranda held him against her shoulder and began to pat his back, her eyes on the curtain edge where the morning light was pressing through.
“She didn’t do anything wrong by accepting a gift.”
“You keep returning to that because it is the one part of this you know how to defend.”
Garrett pushed away from the doorframe. He moved toward the dresser and stopped there, not touching it, standing the way he stood when he wanted to seem like he had somewhere to be. “She offered to bring it back.”
Miranda looked at him then. “Did she?”
“Yes.”
“All of it?”
His mouth opened and closed once before he spoke. “What does that mean?”
“It means has she opened it?”
“I don’t know.” The words came out quieter than the ones before them.
“She sent you a photograph of it open on her bed.”
Owen released a small burp against her neck. Garrett’s gaze moved to the baby for a moment, then back. “That doesn’t mean she used anything.”
Miranda held his gaze. Garrett looked away first, toward the crib, the dresser, anywhere that did not require him to acknowledge how absurdly far he had followed the argument.
“She said she would pack it up,” he continued. “I told her not to.”
“Of course you did.”
“Because I knew you didn’t actually want it back.”
“You knew asking for it would humiliate her.”
“Yes, Miranda. It would.” Garrett’s frustration returned, sharpened by exhaustion. “She accepted a gift in front of everyone. Making her return it because my wife got upset would be humiliating.”
The baby released her and began to cry again. Miranda shifted him to the other side, her hands steady despite the sudden pressure in her chest.
“You told her I got upset,” she said.
“I told her we argued.”
Miranda’s hand moved in slow circles on Owen’s back. “You told the woman at the center of our argument that your wife was angry about her gift.”
“I asked her to give us space.”
“No, you recruited her into our marriage.”
Garrett’s chin lifted slightly. Something shifted behind his eyes—not denial, but the particular look of a person watching the ground change under their feet. “That is a ridiculous way to describe it.”
Miranda felt something inside her close.
He saw it happen. His expression changed before she spoke, but not quickly enough to undo the word.
“You went to her for help managing me,” Miranda said. “You explained my reaction to her, let her apologize for upsetting me, and then protected her from the consequences she offered to accept.”
“That is not what happened.”
“It is exactly what happened.”
“I was setting a boundary.” Garrett’s arms crossed in front of him, a gesture that might have been defensive or might have been the only way he could think to hold himself together.
“You were reassuring her.”
Garrett’s face hardened. “I told her not to contact me.” He said it to Owen, or to the space above Owen, his gaze landing somewhere that did not require him to meet Miranda’s eyes.
“After explaining that the problem was my reaction.”
“I did not blame you.” A muscle moved in his jaw once, and then was still.
“You didn’t have to.” Miranda adjusted Owen beneath the nursing cover and looked toward the morning light spreading across the carpet. “She knows you think I’m jealous. She knows you think I’m hormonal. She knows you slept in the guest room because I made a gift basket into a crisis.”
“I never said hormonal.”
“You didn’t need to use the word with her either.”
Garrett took one step into the room, then stopped when Miranda’s gaze returned to him. “You are inventing a conversation you didn’t hear.”
“And you are protecting a conversation you won’t show me.”
For several seconds, they looked at each other across the room while Owen fed between them, his small body the only thing still moving easily inside the silence.
Garrett’s phone vibrated downstairs again.
This time, neither of them pretended not to know who it was.