Chapter 2 #4
“And I’m sorry I was late.”
“You were late because you stayed to help Willa.”
“I stayed to help everyone.”
“She was the one dealing with the caterer.”
“Because Dennis asked her to.” Garrett adjusted Owen again, though the baby had not moved. “What are we actually arguing about?”
Miranda looked at him. The answer felt too large and too vague to survive being spoken aloud.
She could say the basket. She could say the website.
She could say that he had left her without a car seat because he had nearly taken her vehicle to rescue Willa’s impractical car, or that an entire office now appeared to think of Garrett and Willa as a team while Miranda sat at home reading the proof between feedings.
None of those things sounded serious enough on its own.
“I don’t know,” she said.
Garrett’s shoulders loosened, and the relief on his face hurt more than if he had argued. “You’re tired.”
Miranda picked up the brownie plate and carried it toward the refrigerator.
“Yes,” she said. “I am.”
Garrett followed her with Owen asleep against his chest. “Why don’t you go lie down? I’ll take him for a while.”
She slid the plate onto a shelf and closed the refrigerator door. His offer was kind, practical, and exactly what she had wanted all day.
“All right,” she said.
Garrett smiled, pleased that the problem had been solved. He leaned forward and kissed her forehead, careful not to jostle the sleeping baby between them.
As Miranda climbed the stairs, her phone vibrated in the pocket of her leggings. She checked it on the landing and found a new notification from Halcyon Creative.
The company had posted another photograph.
Garrett stood beside Willa near the raffle table, holding the black-and-gold basket toward her while she covered her mouth with both hands. The room behind them was full of smiling faces, and the caption read, When your work bestie wins exactly what you wanted.
Miranda read it once, then again.
Downstairs, Garrett began humming softly to Owen, unaware that anyone had named what he and Willa were to each other.
Miranda did not go to bed.
She stood on the landing with the phone in her hand until the screen dimmed, then woke it again and looked at the photograph once more.
The image had caught Garrett in profile, smiling at Willa with the easy satisfaction of someone who had done something kind and expected nothing complicated in return.
Willa’s reaction was larger than the moment required. Both hands covered her mouth, her eyes wide, while the other employees watched with the indulgent amusement reserved for a story they already understood.
Work bestie.
The phrase was childish enough that Miranda wanted to dismiss it. It sounded like something written beneath a photograph of matching coffee cups or two coworkers wearing the same color by accident, not a category capable of rearranging a marriage.
She locked the phone and entered the bedroom. The curtains were half closed, leaving a stripe of afternoon light across the unmade bed and the stack of clean laundry she had meant to put away that morning.
Downstairs, Garrett continued humming. His voice moved through the floor in a soft vibration, steady and familiar, and Miranda hated how comforted she felt by it.
She sat on the edge of the mattress and removed the hair tie from her wrist. Her hair was still damp from the shower, curling unevenly around her face, and she had no memory of the last time she had dried it properly.
The photograph returned without invitation.
Willa had been dressed for the event. Her hair shone, her makeup looked effortless, and her waist curved neatly beneath the navy dress Garrett had probably seen her in all day without thinking anything about it.
Miranda believed that part.
Garrett noticed beauty in the same general way he noticed expensive cars or interesting houses. He could admire something without wanting to possess it, and he had never made Miranda feel that his attention wandered in the dangerous way some men’s did.
That was not the problem.
The problem was that he had seen Willa wanting something and had enjoyed being the person who gave it to her.
He had not looked at the basket and thought of his wife. He had not wondered whether Miranda, who had spent the last five months wearing nursing bras and rinsing spit-up from her own hair, might enjoy opening a box that contained nothing practical.
He had thought of Willa because Willa had told him what she wanted.
Miranda lay back without changing her clothes. The mattress dipped beneath her, still holding the faint shape of where Garrett had slept, and she closed her eyes while listening for Owen through the ceiling.
She meant to rest for ten minutes. When she opened her eyes again, the room had darkened and Garrett was sitting beside her with one hand resting lightly on her ankle.
“Hey,” he said. “You’ve been asleep almost two hours.”
Miranda pushed herself upright too quickly. “Where’s Owen?”
“In the crib.” Garrett slid his hand away to give her room. “He took a bottle, screamed at me during tummy time, and fell asleep while I was telling him the plot of Die Hard.”
She looked toward the monitor on the nightstand. The small screen showed Owen on his back with both arms lifted beside his head, his mouth open in sleep.
“What time is it?”
“Almost six.”
Miranda rubbed her face with both hands. Her skin felt creased where it had pressed against the pillow, and her breasts ached with the heaviness of missing a feeding.
“Why didn’t you wake me?”
“You needed it.” Garrett smiled carefully. “Also, he took the bottle without a fight, and I wanted to prove I could do one thing today without creating a crisis.”
The remark was an invitation. He was offering her the chance to laugh, to let the afternoon become one of those marital disagreements that survived only as a joke told later.
Miranda could have taken it. The sleep had softened her anger, and Garrett looked tired enough that she knew the day had cost him something too.
Then his phone lit on the nightstand beside the monitor.
Willa’s name appeared, followed by a preview of a message.
I still can’t believe you?—
Garrett reached for the phone and turned it facedown without reading the rest. The movement was casual, almost polite, as though he were silencing an interruption during an important conversation.
Miranda watched his hand remain on the device.
“You can answer her,” she said.
“I don’t need to.”
“She’s been texting you all day.”
“So have a lot of people.” Garrett removed his hand from the phone and rested it on his thigh. “Everyone was sending pictures from the luncheon.”
“Were they all telling you they couldn’t believe what you did?”
His expression changed. “You saw the post.”
“Yes.”
“I figured you might.”
“The company called her your work bestie.”
Garrett gave a short laugh, but it died when Miranda did not join him. “That’s social media. Lauren writes those captions because Dennis thinks emojis are beneath him.”
“Is she?”
“Is she what?”
“Your work bestie.”
Garrett looked toward the monitor, then back at Miranda. “She’s one of my oldest friends, and we work together. I guess technically, yes.”
The matter-of-fact answer pressed against something raw. Miranda looked down at her hands, where the pale line from her wedding ring seemed unusually sharp against her skin.
“You work with me.”
“Not right now.”
Garrett said it before realizing how it sounded. His face tightened immediately, and he leaned forward.
“That isn’t what I meant.”
“It’s true.”
“You’re on leave.”
“I know what I am.”
“Miranda.” He lowered his voice, though Owen was asleep across the hall. “I’m not trying to upset you.”
“I don’t think you’re trying to do anything.”
“That sounds worse.”
She stood because sitting beside him had begun to feel too intimate for the conversation. The missed feeding had left her shirt damp near one breast, and she crossed her arms to hide it before realizing Garrett had seen far more humiliating things during Owen’s birth.
“What do you and Willa talk about?” she asked.
Garrett’s brows drew together. “Everything, I guess. Work. People we know. Whatever is happening.”
“Do you talk about me?”
“Sometimes.”
“What do you say?”
He stared at her for a second, not guilty but wary. “That depends on the conversation.”
Miranda moved toward the dresser and began folding the stack of laundry, though the clothes had already been folded. She refolded a pair of Owen’s pajamas along the existing lines and placed them beside the others.
“Does she know I’m struggling?”
Garrett did not answer immediately. The silence was brief, but it had weight.
“I haven’t told her anything private,” he said.
“That wasn’t my question.”
“I said you’re tired sometimes. That Owen isn’t sleeping well.” Garrett watched her hands move through the laundry. “Those aren’t secrets.”
“Did you tell her I don’t wear makeup anymore?”
His face hardened then, not because he was angry but because he understood the direction she had taken. “No.”
“Did you tell her we don’t go anywhere?”
“No.”
“That I haven’t been back to the office once since Owen was born?”