CHAPTER 11 #2
"A crib!" she shouted. "I have the crib your Uncle Patrick slept in. It's solid oak. Needs a little varnish, but Declan can do that."
"I'll do it, Ma," Declan said, grinning at me across the table. "I'll make it perfect."
He was attentive. He wouldn't let me carry the laundry basket. He started cooking healthier meals—more spinach, more iron. He rubbed my feet when I got home from shifts.
"You're growing a human," he said, massaging my arch. "You need to rest. I've got the house. I've got everything."
It was intoxicating. It was everything I had wanted. He was the anchor now. He was steady. He was present.
The therapist, Dr. Whitaker, was cautiously optimistic.
"This is a major life transition," she warned us during a session in June. "Babies bring joy, but they also bring stress. It's important that you don't use the pregnancy to paper over the cracks."
"We're not," Declan said confidently. He was holding my hand. "We're building a new foundation. For the kid."
I nodded. "We're good," I said.
And we were. Mostly.
* * *
Then the sickness hit.
It wasn't the cute "morning sickness" they show in movies, where you vomit once gracefully and then go about your day glowing.
It was a relentless, grinding nausea that started the moment I opened my eyes and didn't stop until I passed out at night. It was violent. It was exhausting.
I spent my mornings on the bathroom floor. I spent my shifts at the hospital chewing ginger gum and praying I wouldn't throw up on a patient. I came home grey-faced and trembling.
Declan was great. He held my hair. He brought me crackers. He cleaned the bathroom without complaining.
But sickness is unsexy. Sickness is isolating.
I couldn't go out to dinner. I couldn't go for walks. I spent my evenings curled on the couch in a misery of hormones, unable to tolerate the smell of cooking food or the sound of the TV.
And that's when I noticed the drift returning.
It was subtle. If I hadn't been an expert in the field of Declan Murphy's withdrawal, I might have missed it.
It was the eyes.
We would be talking—or he would be talking, telling me about the crib he was refinishing in the basement—and I would see his gaze slide past me. Just for a second. It would fix on the window. On the middle distance.
It was the phone.
He still put it on the counter at 9:00 p.m. But before 9:00 p.m.? It was always in his hand. Or in his pocket. Or face-down on the coffee table.
One evening, I woke up from a nap on the couch. The nausea had receded slightly.
Declan was sitting in the armchair. He had The Expectant Father open on his lap. But he wasn't reading it.
He was looking at his phone.
He was scrolling. His thumb moved with a rhythmic, hypnotic cadence. His face was slack, illuminated by the blue light. He looked... bored.
He looked like a man killing time.
I watched him through my eyelashes.
Who are you texting? I wondered.
Are you texting Roach?
Are you looking at Instagram?
Are you looking at photos?
Are you looking at her?
He sighed. It was a heavy, restless sound. The sound of air escaping a tire.
He locked the phone and set it down on the arm of the chair. Face down.
Then he picked up the book. He stared at the page, but his eyes didn't move. He wasn't reading. He was performing reading.
"Dec?" I whispered.
He jumped. He looked at me, and the mask slammed back into place instantly. The boredom vanished, replaced by the solicitous husband.
"Hey," he said, smiling. "You awake? How you feeling? Want some ginger ale?"
"I'm okay," I said, sitting up slowly. "Just... tired."
"Go back to sleep," he said. "I'm just reading up on the third trimester. Apparently, you're going to want pickles. I should stock up."
He chuckled.
I smiled back. But my chest felt cold.
He wasn't reading about the third trimester. He was staring at a page he hadn't turned in ten minutes.
He was in the room. He was buying the crib. He was saying the right things.
But he was bored.
The baby was exciting in theory. The baby was a project. But the reality of the pregnancy—the sick wife, the quiet evenings, the lack of sex because I felt like I was dying—wasn't a project. It was just life.
And Declan Murphy struggled with life when it wasn't on fire.
* * *
Intimacy tapered off.
It had to. I was too sick. But even when I felt okay—a rare window on a Saturday morning—he hesitated.
"I don't want to hurt the baby," he said, pulling back when I kissed him.
"You won't hurt the baby," I said. "It's the size of a raspberry. It's well-protected."
"I know," he said, smoothing my hair. "But you're tired. Just rest."
He kissed my forehead. A chaste, paternal kiss.
He treated me like an incubator. A precious, fragile vessel that contained his future. But he stopped treating me like his wife.
I told myself it was normal. He's anxious. He's protective.
But at night, I would lie awake and listen to his breathing. It wasn't the deep, heavy sleep of the content. It was shallow. Restless.
He tossed and turned. He got up to get water. He stood by the window in the dark.
I knew he was looking at the street. I knew he was looking at the escape route.
* * *
Ten weeks.
It was a Tuesday night. The nausea had been brutal all day. I had come home, vomited, and crawled into bed at 7:00 p.m.
Declan came up around 10:00.
He smelled of sawdust—he had been working on the crib in the basement. He showered and climbed into bed.
The room was dark. The streetlights cast their familiar, warped shadows on the ceiling.
He moved close to me. He spooned me from behind, his body warm and solid.
He slid his hand under my t-shirt. His palm rested on my stomach.
There was nothing there yet. Just a tiny, persistent curve that only I could see. But he held it like it was the world.
His hand was heavy. Possessive.
"Goodnight, little guy," he whispered against my hair. "Goodnight, Nora."
"Goodnight," I whispered.
He fell asleep quickly this time. His breathing deepened, slowed into a rhythm.
I lay awake.
I felt the heat of his hand on my belly. It should have felt comforting. It should have felt like a promise kept.
But all I could feel was the desperation in it.
He was holding onto me, but he wasn't holding onto me. He was holding onto the idea of the family. He was holding onto the redemption arc. He was holding onto the thing that proved he was a good man, not a cheater who abandoned his wife.
I covered his hand with mine. I pressed it down harder.
I closed my eyes and sent a prayer into the dark—not to God, but to the tiny, flickering heartbeat inside me.
"Please," I whispered, the sound barely audible over the hum of the air conditioner.
"Please let this be the thing that makes him stay."
I didn't say make him love me.
I didn't say make him happy.
I said stay.
Because deep down, I knew the truth. Love ebbs and flows. Happiness is a weather pattern.
But staying? Staying is a choice.
And I was terrified that without this baby, he was fresh out of reasons to choose me.