6. Chapter Six
Chapter Six
Caroline
For a few confused seconds, Caroline thought Hayden was beside her.
Her eyes were still closed. The other half of the bed held the faint warmth of morning sunlight, and her exhausted mind thought it was his body next to hers. She expected the mattress to shift, expected his arm to find her waist and his mouth to brush her shoulder before he got up.
Then she opened her eyes.
His side of the bed was smooth and empty.
She was still wearing yesterday’s clothes, wrinkled from the hours she’d spent twisting under the covers without ever properly sleeping.
Her neck hurt, her mouth was dry, and one hand rested over the curve of her stomach as if she’d spent the night shielding their daughter from words neither of them could take back.
If you weren’t pregnant, I’d divorce you.
Caroline reached for her phone. There was no missed call, no message, nothing from Hayden since he’d told her he was driving to Manhattan because he just couldn’t be in her presence anymore.
She refreshed the screen, though she knew that wouldn’t magically make anything appear.
She opened his contact and stared at the picture she’d chosen months ago, one she’d taken in Vegas while he complained that the sunlight was in his eyes.
He was half smiling anyway. Her thumb hovered over the call button.
She could ask where he was. She could tell him they needed to finish the conversation. She could give him the chance to say he’d been angry, that he’d never meant it, that he knew their daughter hadn’t been part of some plan.
But she’d already defended herself. He’d heard her and chosen not to believe her.
Calling him now would feel like begging him to decide she was worth staying married to after all.
She locked the phone and set it down. A minute later, she picked it up and opened his contact again. Still nothing.
Caroline sat up slowly. Her daughter shifted low in her belly, a firm roll that pressed against her palm.
“I know,” she whispered. “I don’t know what we’re doing either.”
She couldn’t stay here waiting for Hayden to decide what he believed. She needed somewhere to go. Somewhere familiar, where she could close a door and think without feeling that every wall belonged to him.
Her friend Anita answered on the fourth ring with a sleepy, “If this is a request for bail money, I need details before I commit.”
The sound of her voice nearly broke Caroline’s control.
“It’s me.”
There was a pause. Anita sounded fully awake when she spoke again.
“Caroline? What’s wrong?”
“Is my old room still free?”
“What?”
“At the apartment. I know I said I wasn’t coming back, and I know it’s been months. I just thought maybe…”
“Oh, honey.” Anita let out a breath. “I rented it. The new tenant moved in three weeks ago.”
Caroline stared at the open bedroom door.
She had pictured Anita’s apartment without allowing herself to admit it: the cramped kitchen, the old couch, her room with the window that stuck halfway open.
She’d imagined putting her suitcase on the floor and sleeping for a day.
After that, she could start working out what came next.
The picture vanished so quickly that fear rushed into its place.
“Right,” she said. “Of course you did.”
“Tell me what’s happening.”
“Hayden and I had a terrible argument.”
“How terrible?”
Caroline looked down at her left hand. Both rings caught the morning light.
“I need to leave for a while,” she said.
“Did he hurt you?”
“Not like that. He’d never… no. He said some things.”
“What things?”
She couldn’t repeat them. Not yet. Saying the words aloud would make them something that had happened to her marriage, not a nightmare she might still wake from.
“I can’t talk about it right now.”
“You can come here anyway,” Anita said. “You can have the couch. It’ll be awful, and you’ll probably murder the new girl when she takes forty minutes in the bathroom, but we’ll make it work.”
Caroline closed her eyes. Anita meant it. That almost made accepting worse.
“There’s no space,” she said.
“There’s a couch,” Anita insisted.
“And another tenant who didn’t agree to live with a pregnant stranger.”
“You’re not a stranger. You’re an alarming cautionary tale with excellent hair.”
A laugh caught in Caroline’s throat and came out as a rough breath.
“I love you,” she said.
Anita’s voice softened. “I love you too. Let me help.”
“You did.” Caroline pressed her lips together until they stopped shaking. “I’ll call you when I know where I’m going.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
After they hung up, Caroline tapped on her mother’s contact.
Her mother answered over the clatter of dishes and voices.
“Sweetheart, I’m at work. Is everything all right?”
“No.” The word came out before Caroline could make it gentler.
The noise on the other end faded. Her mother must have stepped away from the diner floor.
“What happened?”
“Hayden and I had a terrible argument. I need to come home.”
“Then come home.”
No hesitation. No questions about what Caroline had done or how long she planned to stay.
“Mom, there’s no room.”
“We’ll make room.”
“You’re already sharing Jemma’s apartment. Hank is there. It’s two bedrooms.”
“You can sleep with me. We shared a bed when you were little, and you kicked much harder than you do now.”
Caroline put a hand over her mouth.
Her mother kept talking, brisk and cheerful in the way she became when worry was too large to face directly.
“I’ll clear out the space beside the dresser. Jemma has those storage bags that go under the bed. We can move my things. We’ll get clean sheets on before you arrive. When can you come?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t looked at tickets.”
“Look now. Send me the details, and I’ll be there.”
“I don’t want to be another problem for you.”
“You aren’t a problem.” The cheer left her mother’s voice. “You’re my daughter. Come home.”
Caroline swallowed. “Okay.”
“Are you safe?”
“Yes.”
“Is the baby all right?”
“She’s moving.”
“And Hayden?”
Caroline glanced at his empty side of the bed. “He’s in Manhattan.”
There was a careful silence. “Do you want to tell me what he said?”
Her mother was already working out how to fit two grown women and a baby into a room meant for one. Caroline couldn’t place Hayden’s accusation in her hands too.
“Not yet.”
“All right. You don’t have to tell me yet. Just get here.”
Caroline promised she would.
She checked her phone again before she opened the airline site. Hayden still hadn’t called.
The cheapest one-way ticket that didn’t involve spending the night in an airport took most of what she had.
Her savings had seemed respectable when she was working regular shifts in Vegas.
After months without a paycheck, the number was small enough to frighten her.
Hayden had paid her student debt, but that didn’t give her money to live on now.
She bought the ticket before she could talk herself into waiting another day.
The confirmation email gave her a departure time and a sequence of steps. Pack, order a car, get to the airport, get on the plane. Practical things with clear endings.
She changed into soft pants and a loose shirt, then pulled her suitcase from the closet.
She packed clothes she could wear without thinking, underwear, toiletries, and her prenatal vitamins.
Her laptop went into its case with both chargers.
She found her passport, insurance card, and the folder of pregnancy records she’d kept from her appointments.
She added the yellow dress from Vegas, took one look at it folded atop her other clothes, then grabbed it again and put it back in the closet.
She didn’t know when she’d return. She couldn’t let herself pack as though she never would.
Hayden’s credit card was in her wallet behind her own debit card. Her name was printed on it, but the account was his. She carried it to the dresser and laid it on the polished wood.
Her rings were harder.
Caroline turned the wedding band around her finger.
Hayden had put it there while they’d both been grinning so widely that the woman performing the ceremony had laughed at them.
Her engagement ring had come first, chosen quickly and extravagantly because that was how everything happened with him.
She’d never asked what either ring cost. She’d only cared that he’d wanted her to wear them.
Now he believed she had wanted everything else.
She pulled off the engagement ring, then the band. The pale marks around her finger looked private and exposed. She set both rings on top of the credit card and didn’t leave a note. Anything she wrote would become another attempt to convince him, and she had no words left for that.
Her suitcase was almost closed when she remembered the documents in the library desk.
Walking through the house with her laptop case over one shoulder, she noticed how little evidence she’d left in any room.
A book and a mug on a coffee table. A pair of shoes near the back door.
Six months in this house, and most of her life still fit inside one suitcase.
She collected the papers, rinsed the mug, and put the book back on its shelf.
On the way back upstairs, she stopped outside the nursery.
The door stood open. Soft cream walls framed the white crib and the long dresser topped with neatly arranged baskets.
Tiny clothes hung in the closet by color and size.
A pale rug covered the floor under the chair where Caroline had imagined feeding her daughter in the middle of the night.
Everything was finished. Everything had been chosen, delivered, and arranged before Caroline had managed to decide what kind of mother she wanted to be in this house.
She stepped to the crib and touched the smooth rail.
The luxury elsewhere didn’t matter. She could leave the huge bed, the formal rooms, the garden, and all the polished surfaces without missing them.
But this room held the future she’d believed in.
Her daughter would sleep here. Hayden would come in barefoot and half awake.
They would complain about being tired and secretly love it.
They were supposed to stand over this crib together, astonished by the person they’d made.
Caroline bent her head and breathed until the pain behind her ribs loosened enough for her to move.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered to her daughter. “I’m so sorry.”
The baby pressed firmly against her palm.
Caroline returned to the bedroom, closed her suitcase, and ordered a car with her own card.
She took the bags downstairs, one careful step at a time.
Nobody stopped her. She didn’t seek out the housekeeper or leave instructions.
There was no announcement she could make that wouldn’t turn her departure into a household event before she was safely gone.
At the front door, she checked her phone. Nothing.
She stepped outside and pulled the door shut behind her.
Once at the airport, she checked while waiting to drop off her suitcase.
She checked after security, while buying water, and again at the gate.
Each time, she imagined his name appearing as she looked.
He would say he’d been wrong. He would ask her to wait.
He would explain how a man who had trusted her completely one day could look at her the next day and see a trap.
The screen showed messages from her mother and Anita. None from Hayden.
Caroline sent her itinerary to both women. She told Anita she was going to Bakersfield and ignored the immediate demand for a phone call when she landed. Then she sat with both hands over her stomach until boarding began.
The journey passed in broken pieces. A hard seat, a paper cup of juice, her daughter’s restless movement under the lap belt, and uncomfortable sleep that lasted minutes at a time.
By the time she reached Bakersfield, hope had become another kind of exhaustion. Her mother was waiting beyond the security area in her diner uniform, arms already open.
Caroline walked into them.
Her mother held her tightly, then drew back to look at her face.
“You look worn out.”
“That’s because I traveled beautifully.”
“I can see that.” Her mother’s eyes filled with tears, but she smiled. “Come on. Let’s get you home.”
Her aunt Jemma met them at the apartment door and hugged Caroline with flour still dusting one sleeve.
“Look at you. You’re all baby.”
“There’s still some of me in here.” Caroline forced a smile to her tight lips.
“We’ll find it after you sleep.”
Hank lifted one hand from the couch. His shirt was rumpled, and an open bag of chips rested against his stomach. Shoes, newspapers, and two empty glasses crowded the floor around him.
“Hey, kid,” he said. “Big house get boring?”
Jemma gave him a hard look. “Not now, Hank.”
“Just asking,” he shrugged.
Caroline managed a nod and followed her mother down the short hall.
After Southampton, every step brought her close to another person’s belongings.
Coats hung from hooks by the bathroom door, towels were stacked on a chair because the narrow cupboard was full, and a laundry basket occupied one corner of the bedroom she would share with her mother.
Her mother had cleared a strip of floor beside the bed. Half a dresser drawer stood empty, and two hangers waited in the crowded closet. Clean sheets covered the double bed. Caroline could see where her mother’s things had been pushed together to make space.
“It’s not much,” her mother said. “We’ll sort out something better.”
Caroline put her suitcase against the wall. It filled most of the cleared strip.
“It’s enough.”
“You don’t need to worry about anything tonight.”
“I need to find work.”
“Caroline.”
“I mean it. I’ll start looking tomorrow. I can contribute to groceries, and I’ll help with rent as soon as I can.”
Her mother touched her cheek. “You can sleep tonight. That’s what you can do.”
Caroline nodded because arguing required strength she didn’t have.
She sat on the edge of the shared bed, shoulder nearly touching the dresser, and took out her phone.
There was still no call from Hayden.