37. Avery
AVERY
Six weeks after Sasha dies, the prosecutor’s letter clears my shooting on the same afternoon a delivery driver leaves a car seat the size of a washing machine in my office lobby.
I read the sentence saying no charges will be filed twice, then hand the letter to Nadia because I trust the seal and signature more than the fact that I don’t feel cleared.
At thirty-four weeks pregnant, I have a normal caseload again, a closing appointment for this house tomorrow, and a cardboard box blocking the path to my desk because the baby will not wait for me to make peace with what happened.
“Leave it here until morning,” Nadia says, standing beside the box with her arms crossed. The scrape on her cheek healed a month ago, but she touches the spot whenever the rear elevator opens. “The building will not collapse because one baby seat spends the night under my ficus.”
“Your ficus has been dead since November.” I slide the prosecutor’s letter into my bag, then check the hallway behind Nadia before I can stop myself.
Both exits are open. The new camera over the service elevator shows an annoyed courier on the first floor and nobody in a stolen maintenance jacket.
“Also, the crib comes tomorrow. If I leave this here, I’ll own two boxes I can’t assemble in two different buildings. ”
Nadia looks at the car seat, then at my stomach, weighing the firm policy against the fact that I will try to drag it myself if she says no.
She calls the building porter and has him carry it to my car while I complain that pregnancy has turned everybody into a committee.
Her answer is that my refusal to ask for help has turned everybody into witnesses.
I drive home with the clearance letter on the passenger seat and the car seat strapped into the back like a passenger who already requires more equipment than I do.
The rental becomes mine tomorrow. My settlement and the dwelling payment the insurer released early once the arson file named Sasha cover the down payment, my Bell & Rourke income qualifies for the loan, and the deed will carry only my name.
Declan received the closing notice through counsel because the insurance money came from our burned house.
He signed every release without asking for an ownership interest, a key, or proof that the nursery has enough room.
Gage calls while I am still in the driveway with the engine off.
He has been closing out the house-check file since the club stopped running the road past my gate, and he wants to know whether the camera over the fence stays or comes down.
I tell him it stays and write his work-order number on the back of the clearance letter.
Declan has followed every instruction for six weeks.
He uses the email address I chose, attends only the appointments I invite him to, and has not appeared once at the gate because he was worried, nearby, or sure I needed something.
I expect Gage to read the number back and end the call. He doesn’t.
“One more thing, and I’m giving it to you because somebody will hand you a prettier version eventually.
” Metal goes down on concrete on his end.
“Cruz opened the eastern route to the full table Tuesday night. Every patch in the building was welcome in that room. Declan was in the building. He told Bones he’d take the shop work instead, and he sat on the steps outside until the table broke up. An hour and forty minutes.”
I look at the car seat filling my rearview mirror. “Who told him to stay out?”
“Nobody.” Gage says it the way he reads back a charge he intends to dispute. “No officer at the door, no vote pending, no reason he couldn’t sit in the back and listen. I asked Bones twice because I wanted him lying about it. Bones doesn’t cover for him anymore.”
“Then why call me.”
“Because you make decisions off facts, and you’re going to keep having to make them about him.
” He sounds angry, and he sounds as if he has rehearsed every word, like a man reciting an inventory he did not want to take.
“I’m not vouching. I got shot over that man’s paperwork.
The first week he takes a chair back in that room, you’ll hear that from me too. ”
The call ends and I sit with my hand flat on the clearance letter, the work-order number drying across the seal.
The chase is over. Everybody involved has gone back to ordinary life.
No officer watches him obey, no club table waits to hear whether he made the right choice, and no emergency rewards restraint with the sight of me alive.
He sat on a concrete step while the meeting he has wanted back since October went on beyond the wall, then drove home and put none of it in an email to me.
Gage had to tell me, and Gage wants him to fail.
I have spent six weeks waiting for proof I could dismiss on its source.
It came from the last man who would flatter him.
The house smells like lemon cleaner when I carry the first loose pieces of the car seat into the living room.
I scrubbed every bottle of jasmine shampoo from my bathroom after waking one night convinced Sasha had opened the shower curtain.
June helped me replace it with the cheapest citrus brand at the grocery store, then removed every jasmine candle from the house while calling the scent an asshole in flower form.
The nightmares haven’t stopped. I wake with my hand reaching beneath a coat I am not wearing and the conference-room wall breaking behind my head.
Then I check the nursery, both doors, the gate camera, and the lockbox before I can lie down again.
Sasha is dead. My mind has not accepted that as a reason to stop checking exits, but I refuse to give her the whole house.
I shower here. I work in my office with the door open.
I sit in the nursery and fold clothes while the baby kicks against my side.
Some nights the jasmine smell returns even when the bottle in my hand says lemon.
I open the cap, force myself to smell what is actually there, and keep using it.
The car-seat base looks less hateful on the living-room rug than it did inside the box.
I spread the manual, labels, straps, inserts, and metal pieces around me, then spend twenty minutes learning that the latch connector I need is trapped beneath padding the diagram insists should lift.
It does not lift. I pull until the baby objects with one hard kick, sit back against the couch, and reread the same instruction while my swollen fingers leave dents in the page.
The eczema is back across both knuckles from the dry air and the soap at work, and his mother’s balm jar has moved into my coat pocket again, where my hand finds it before I decide to look for it.
Declan would find the hidden release in seconds.
The thought makes me angry enough to attack the padding again, which gets one strap wrapped around my wrist and knocks the manual beneath the coffee table.
I could call June, but she is working. Gage would send a prospect, and then the club would know I lost a fight with equipment designed to protect an infant.
I could wait for the fitting appointment Dr. Evans recommended.
What I do is open Declan’s last email, sent after the prenatal appointment.
Appointment notes attached. I corrected the after-hours number. I won’t come to the house unless you ask.
I want his help. I’m embarrassed because I have spent months treating every want like a trap. Calling Declan gives him one badly designed car seat and however much time I choose. Nothing else follows unless I say so.
“I need help with the car seat,” I say when he answers, skipping the greeting before either of us can make the call mean more. “You may come to the house for that. Use the front door. Don’t bring anyone.”
Declan takes the request as I gave it to him. I hear a chair move and keys leave a table. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes. Do you need anything before I arrive?”
“A small screwdriver if you have one. The manufacturer apparently expects newborns to arrive with a complete tool chest.”
“I have one. I’ll knock.” He ends the call before old habit can turn his coming over into permission to keep talking.
I use the twenty minutes to put the packaging in the recycling bin and pretend I didn’t check the gate camera twice before his truck appears.
Declan parks outside the fence rather than using the code the club had while Gage was still running house checks.
He carries a red-handled screwdriver and the same notebook he used at the clinic, with no overnight bag, food, flowers, or object chosen to remind me of our marriage.
When I open the door, his gaze runs over my face, stomach, and hands before stopping on the car-seat pieces across the rug. He notices the exhaustion because he knows me. He keeps the observation behind his teeth because he also knows I would close the door.
“Shoes off,” I say, stepping aside far enough to let him enter. “The manual is under the coffee table because I threw it there after it lied to me.”
“Manuals don’t lie. They leave out the one picture that would keep a man from breaking the damned thing.” Declan removes his boots on the mat and walks directly to the rug, not toward the kitchen, hall, or nursery. “Show me where it beat you.”
I lower myself onto the couch while he sits on the floor. “The lower anchors are under that pad. The page says lift, which is insulting when the material is clearly sewn down.”
He reaches beneath the edge, stops, then picks up the manual instead of trusting his hands.
Months ago, Declan would have thrown the instructions aside and made the seat obey him.
Now he uses his phone to read the paragraph aloud, enlarges the diagram, and finds a hidden plastic tab beneath the warning label.