Chapter 5 #3
“Her calling HR will give her information.”
“Assuming they answer honestly.”
The words settled over the table. Miranda lifted her head, and Garrett seemed to realize too late what he had admitted.
“You think they might not,” she said.
“I think HR protects the company. That isn’t exactly controversial.”
“Yesterday you told me I was panicking over a staff page.”
“I said we didn’t have enough information.”
“You said my job was safe.”
“I still think it is.” Garrett rubbed one hand along his jaw, irritation beginning to show beneath the effort to remain measured. “But if you’re going to call them, you should know what questions to ask.”
Claire capped her pen. “She knows how to ask questions.”
“I didn’t say she didn’t.”
“You keep explaining what you didn’t say after saying something very close to it.”
Garrett looked from Claire to Miranda. “Did you bring her here to help or to referee?”
Miranda saved the message and closed the folder. “I brought her because I needed someone who would read the documents instead of diagnosing my reaction to them.”
His face tightened. “I apologized for that.”
“No, you stopped using the word hormonal.”
Claire looked down at the legal pad, but Miranda saw the corner of her mouth harden. Garrett saw it too.
“This is exactly why I didn’t want other people involved,” he said. “Now everything I say becomes evidence in a case the two of you are building.”
Miranda stared at him. “You involved Willa last night.”
“That is not the same thing.”
“No. You involved the woman who benefits from what happened.”
Garrett pushed back from the table, the chair legs scraping against the floor. The sound traveled through the quiet house, and all three of them glanced automatically toward the baby monitor.
Owen remained asleep.
Garrett lowered his voice when he spoke again. “I told Willa not to contact me because the messages were making things worse. I did not ask her to take sides.”
“You told her enough to offer the basket back,” Claire said.
His head turned sharply. “Miranda told you that?”
“She told me what happened in her own marriage.”
Garrett stood. He looked tired rather than angry now, which made the strain around his mouth more visible.
“I’m going to the grocery store,” he said. “We need formula, dishwasher tablets, and the cereal Miranda likes.”
Miranda looked at the running list attached to the refrigerator. The cereal was not written there. Garrett had remembered it on his own, the way he remembered small things often enough to make larger failures difficult to hold without doubt.
“We have formula,” she said.
“One container.”
“That lasts almost two weeks. We’re only supplementing, I’m still breastfeeding him.”
“I know. I thought I’d get another so we don’t run out.”
“You don’t need to stockpile because we had an argument.”
Garrett’s expression closed. “Buying formula is not a symbolic act.”
“No, but you are treating every household task as evidence.”
He looked at her for several seconds, then reached for his keys without answering. Claire remained still across the table, giving Miranda no indication whether she thought the exchange had gone too far.
At the door, Garrett stopped and turned back. “Do you want anything from the store?”
Miranda nearly said no. The answer would have preserved the line between them, but Owen needed diaper cream and she had forgotten to add it to the list.
“The blue tube, not the white one,” she said. “The white one makes his skin worse.”
Garrett nodded once. “I know which one.”
He left before she could decide whether the confidence was justified or meant to wound.
The front door closed, followed by the garage lifting and the engine starting. Claire waited until the sound faded from the street before reaching into the bakery bag.
“I brought the almond thing again,” she said. “Apparently our family now processes marital collapse through laminated pastry.”
“We are not collapsing.”
Claire tore the pastry in half and set one piece on a napkin beside Miranda’s coffee. “Then we’re conducting a controlled demolition.”
Miranda almost smiled, but the feeling did not survive long enough to reach her mouth. She looked toward the empty chair Garrett had left pulled away from the table.
“He really does remember the cereal,” she said.
Claire broke off a piece of pastry and ate it before answering. “That’s probably why this is so hard.”
Miranda looked down at the leave agreement, where the phrase equivalent position waited in clean black type. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with all the parts of him that are good.”
“You don’t have to do anything with them today.” Claire slid the legal pad closer and tapped the next blank line with her pen. “Today, you call HR before Garrett has time to come home with groceries and make the house feel normal.”
Miranda picked up her phone. The human resources director’s number was saved beneath a name she had not used since arranging her leave.
She pressed call before she could lose the nerve, and the ringing began while Claire opened the folder to a fresh page.