Chapter 7
Claire came downstairs with Owen tucked against her shoulder and his cloth book trapped beneath one arm. He had stopped crying, but his face remained blotchy from the effort, and his damp fist had caught in the collar of her blouse hard enough to pull it sideways.
“He appears to have survived the upstairs,” Claire said. Her gaze moved between Miranda and Garrett, lingering on the unopened case of formula before settling on the laptop screen. “The rest of you look less certain.”
Garrett held out his arms. “I’ll take him. He’s probably tired of being passed around while everyone talks about him.”
Claire’s eyebrows lifted, but she transferred Owen without comment. Garrett settled the baby against his chest, supporting his head with one hand while Owen immediately caught the neckline of his shirt and dragged it toward his mouth.
Miranda looked back at the YSL website. The landing page showed a woman in a black suit leaning against a mirrored wall, her expression remote enough to suggest she had never needed to ask anyone whether a purchase fit the budget.
“I’m going to order something today,” Miranda said. She clicked into the beauty section and watched the page fill with lacquered cases, square glass bottles, and small jars displayed against white backgrounds. “I don’t want to keep saving the money for a gift I no longer want to give.”
Garrett’s hand stopped against Owen’s back. He looked at her for several seconds, waiting for the remark to become less deliberate than it was.
“You’re serious,” he said.
Miranda moved the cursor over a perfume bottle, though the description beneath it meant nothing to her. “Yes.”
“You’re going to spend almost nine hundred dollars today because we had a fight yesterday.”
“No. I’m going to spend money I saved.”
“For my birthday.”
“It’s in my account.”
Garrett gave a short, disbelieving laugh and turned away, carrying Owen toward the sofa. The laugh held none of his usual amusement. It was the sound he made when a client proposed something so unreasonable that politeness required him to confirm he had heard correctly.
“I know it’s in your account,” he said. He sat with Owen across his thighs and adjusted the baby’s romper where it had bunched beneath one leg. “That doesn’t mean we both don’t know what it was for.”
Miranda watched him smooth the fabric. “I changed my mind.”
“Because I gave Willa a basket.”
“Because I spent seven months setting aside money for something you wanted, and yesterday you gave another woman something worth almost the same amount without thinking about me once.”
“There was no cost to me.” Garrett’s voice sharpened as soon as the distinction left him, and he leaned into it instead of reconsidering. “I won a raffle. You’re talking about taking money out of our household.”
“It isn’t household money.”
“We have one income right now, Miranda. All of our money is household money.”
The words pressed against the room with enough force that Claire stopped pretending to examine her laptop. Miranda looked at Garrett, but his attention remained on Owen’s hands as he worked the cloth book free from the baby’s grip.
“The money came from freelance work I did before Owen was born,” Miranda said. “It came from returns, grocery savings, and gifts. You have never counted it as household money before.”
“Because you were saving it for something for us.”
“For you.”
“For something we had discussed.” Garrett looked up at last. “That rod was going to be expensive, but at least it was something I’d use for years. You’re about to blow the entire amount on perfume and makeup because you want to punish me.”
Claire shut her laptop completely. “That sounds dangerously close to telling her what she is allowed to buy with her own money.”
Garrett’s head turned toward her. “This is between me and my wife.”
“You’re having it in front of me.”
“Because she called you over to help build a case against me.”
Miranda pushed her chair back, not to stand but to put distance between herself and the table. “Claire came to read my employment documents.”
“And now she’s shopping with you while you spend my birthday money.”
“It is not your money.”
“You told me it was for me.”
“I had planned to use it for you.” Miranda looked at the website again, at the prices listed beneath objects she had never wanted until yesterday. “I am no longer planning to.”
Garrett stared at her with open hurt now, but the hurt did not soften him. It made him angrier, as though Miranda had discovered a possession of his and announced she intended to destroy it.
“So that’s it,” he said. “You saved for months, told yourself you were doing something generous, and now you get to turn the same money into a weapon because I disappointed you.”
Miranda felt the accusation strike somewhere deeper than she expected. She had been angry when she told him about the account. She had wanted him to understand the difference between months of attention and one spontaneous decision. She had also wanted him to feel the loss.
“That gift belonged to me until I gave it to you,” she said.
“No, apparently it belonged to whoever made you angriest.”
“Do you hear yourself?”
“I hear both of you acting as though this is some empowering decision instead of retaliation.” Garrett shifted Owen higher when the baby began to fuss, but his gaze remained on Miranda.
“If I took nine hundred dollars I had saved for your birthday and bought myself fishing equipment after an argument, you would call me selfish.”
“If you had spent seven months choosing something for me, then watched me hand an equally expensive gift to another man because he mentioned wanting it, I might understand why.”
“That is not what happened.”
“It is exactly what happened from where I was standing.”
“You weren’t standing there.” Garrett’s frustration broke free of whatever restraint remained. “You were at home looking at photographs and deciding what every person in them was thinking.”
The room went quiet except for Owen’s soft complaint. Garrett looked down and pressed the cloth book into the baby’s hands, but Owen dropped it between them and twisted toward the sound of Miranda’s voice.
Miranda did not pick him up. The refusal was not directed at Owen, but her body did not recognize the distinction. Her arms felt suddenly empty and restless.
“You think this is about the price,” she said.
“I think the price matters when we agreed to cut back while you were on unpaid leave.”
“We did not cut back on the basket.”
“We didn’t buy the basket.”
“No. Willa received it for free.” Miranda rested one hand on the back of the chair. “I’m the only person who has to justify wanting it.”
Garrett’s expression tightened with the exhaustion of someone forced to repeat an obvious truth. “You never wanted it before yesterday.”
“I didn’t know it existed before yesterday.”
“You don’t even know what’s in it.”
“Neither did you when you gave it away.”
“I knew Willa wanted it.”
The sentence stopped them both.
Garrett looked away first. He rubbed Owen’s back with more pressure than the baby required, his thumb moving over the embroidered ducks on the romper.
Miranda waited for him to hear the answer he had given. When he spoke again, his voice had gone flatter.
“That still does not make spending our savings on designer makeup reasonable.”
“My savings.”
“Fine. Your savings.” Garrett rose with Owen and began pacing between the sofa and the front window, too angry to remain seated and too conscious of the baby to let the anger become loud.
“Spend all of it. Buy the exact perfume Willa got. Buy every lipstick she opened. Just stop pretending this is about rediscovering yourself.”
Claire stood and reached for her purse. “I think Miranda and I should go.”
Garrett gave her a cold look. “Of course you do.”
“I think staying here is going to turn this into another three-hour argument, and Owen has already heard enough.”
“He is five months old.”
“Then you should be able to manage him for two hours.”
The challenge landed exactly where Claire intended. Garrett’s shoulders drew back, and he tucked Owen more securely against his chest.
“I can manage my son,” he said.
Miranda looked toward the staircase. Leaving Owen had seemed possible when the outing existed only as an idea, but now every practical detail arrived at once: the bottle he might refuse, the nap he would fight, the way he searched for her when he became overtired.
Her hesitation must have shown because Garrett laughed again, quieter this time.
“Go,” he said. “You’ve made the point. You may as well finish it.”
Miranda turned toward him. “I am not leaving Owen with you to make a point.”
“No, you’re leaving him with me so you can spend the money you saved for my birthday on the thing that started this fight.”
Claire slipped her purse over her shoulder. “Garrett, you gave Willa the gift. Miranda buying something for herself did not start this.”
“I know what I did.” He looked at Miranda rather than Claire. “I also know cruelty when I see it.”
The word startled her. Garrett seemed to take strength from the fact that it had landed.
“You told me about that account because you wanted me to know exactly what I was losing,” he continued. “You wanted me to picture the rod, understand how long you’d planned it, and feel punished every time I saw whatever you bought instead.”
Miranda opened her mouth, but the immediate denial would have been dishonest. She had wanted him to feel something. She had wanted the pain to travel in both directions for once instead of remaining inside her while Garrett waited for it to pass.
“I wanted you to understand the difference,” she said.
“I understand that you can be vindictive.”
Claire moved closer, but Miranda raised a hand without looking at her. She did not need her sister to interrupt this. The sentence belonged between Miranda and Garrett, clean enough that neither could later claim it had been misunderstood.
Garrett’s anger had colored his face along the cheekbones. Owen stared up at him, captivated by the movement of his mouth, then caught Garrett’s lower lip with one small hand.
Garrett gently freed himself and kissed the baby’s palm. The tenderness of the gesture made the accusation harder to absorb.
“You can be angry,” Miranda said. “You can think I’m wasting the money.
You can even think I’m doing it partly because I want you to feel what it is like to be the person who was not considered.
But you do not get to call me cruel for deciding I am no longer buying you an eleven-hundred-dollar birthday present. ”
“I didn’t ask you to buy it.”
“No. You only expected me not to take it away once you knew it existed.”
“That is not the same thing.”
“It feels different because this time you’re the one who didn’t get the gift.”
Garrett stared at her. For a moment, she thought the comparison had reached him, but his face hardened instead.
“No,” he said. He moved toward the kitchen and picked up one of the prepared bottles from beside the warmer. “It feels different because I am your husband, and you are deliberately trying to hurt me.”
Miranda took her purse from the hook near the door. Her hands had begun to shake, and she tucked the strap over her shoulder so neither Garrett nor Claire would see.
“I’ll be back in two hours,” she said. “His last feeding was at ten-thirty, but there are two bottles if he wants more.”
“I know when he ate.” Garrett did not look at her as he checked the milk level. “You don’t have to leave instructions as though I’ve never been alone with him.”
Miranda almost reminded him that he had not been alone with Owen for more than an hour since the birth. The observation would only feed the quarrel, and Owen deserved one room in which his care was not used as evidence.
She crossed to Garrett and kissed the baby’s forehead. Owen smelled faintly of Claire’s perfume and the sweet milk drying near the corner of his mouth.
“I love you,” she whispered, though the words were for him alone.
Garrett shifted the baby away before she had fully straightened. The movement was small enough to be accidental and deliberate enough that Miranda felt it.
“Go buy whatever you want,” he said. “Just don’t come home expecting me to pretend it means something noble.”
Miranda looked at him one last time. He stood in their living room holding their son, wounded by the loss of a gift he had learned about less than twenty minutes earlier, while still unable to understand why the basket had broken something open in her.
Claire opened the front door. Warm air entered the hallway, carrying the smell of cut grass and charcoal from a neighbor’s yard.
Miranda stepped outside without answering. Behind her, Garrett shut the door before she reached the bottom of the porch steps.