Chapter 13
Molly
I don't remember what sleep feels like anymore.
Clem is four weeks old now, and I've aged approximately four hundred years. Every noise on the county road makes me freeze. Every headlight that sweeps past the farm sends me ducking away from windows like I'm in a spy movie, except spy movies have competent protagonists who shower regularly.
I've been keeping the house dark. No lights visible from the road, no car in the driveway.
I park behind the barn now, hidden from view.
Miguel texts every few days with updates from the hives at his orchard, and he knows not to tell anyone I'm back, bless his heart.
Maggie has the address for legal reasons but she swore she wouldn't share it, and I have to trust that.
Maggie is the one person I have to trust. Even if it kills me.
I did report Boone. The day after the drugstore, from my grandmother's kitchen table, with Clem asleep on my chest, I gave a sheriff's deputy his plate number and every word Jolene screamed across that parking lot, and then I forwarded all of it to my lawyer.
Nothing's come of it yet. Nothing ever comes of anything fast enough.
My lawyer sent the independent result and Jensen's confession three weeks ago.
Hudson isn't Taz's son. Kendall drugged him, and Jensen helped sustain the lie.
I read the documents; the separate apology letter is still sealed in my nightstand.
Knowing what they did to him hasn't erased what he chose to hide from me.
Clem's crying again. She cries a lot, which all the books say is normal, but the books don't mention that it sounds like someone stabbing you directly in the soul.
I'm feeding her what feels like constantly.
The lactation consultant at the hospital said every two to three hours is normal for a newborn, which sounded manageable until the math sank in: every two to three hours includes all the hours between midnight and six AM when my body is screaming for rest.
"Shh, baby girl," I murmur, settling her against my chest. "You're right. Everything is terrible and you're right to complain about it."
She latches on and the crying stops, replaced by those tiny snuffling sounds that somehow make everything worth it. For about three minutes, until my nipples start screaming and I remember that I have no idea what I'm doing and I'm completely alone.
That isn't true. I have my daughter. Az helped me stock the pantry. The electricity and water work, and the roof doesn't leak. I keep making this list as though gratitude might qualify me for an afternoon off.
I have a wedding ring sitting on a hospital bassinet somewhere in LA, and a husband who chose another woman's emergency over his actual family.
That's fine. I'm fine, and everything is fine.
The knock comes three mornings later, and I almost have a heart attack.
Clem's in the bassinet, the cheap one I bought at the big-box store, not anything from the nursery we decorated together, and I'm standing at the kitchen sink trying to remember if I've eaten anything today.
The knock is firm and professional, not aggressive, but my hand still goes to the knife block before I catch myself.
Get a grip, Molly. You're not in a horror movie.
I peek through the curtain, angling myself so I can see without being seen. There's a van in the driveway with a logo on the side for a cleaning service. Two women in matching polo shirts are standing on the porch, looking bored and checking their phones.
I don't recognize them. I don't know anyone who would send a cleaning crew to my grandmother's farm.
Except I do know someone. I know exactly one person with the money and the resources and the audacity to track me down and send strangers to my door.
I should tell them to leave. I should keep the door locked and wait until they go away and then figure out how to disappear even more thoroughly.
But my house smells like spit-up and desperation, and I haven't mopped the floor since I arrived, and I'm so tired that the idea of someone else cleaning feels like a hallucination of heaven.
I open the door.
"Ms. Edward?" The taller woman smiles, professional and friendly. "We're from Fresh Start Cleaning Services. We have a work order for a deep clean today. The payment's been processed and verified through our system. I have my credentials right here if you'd like to check."
"Can I call your dispatcher first?" I ask. "Just to verify?"
"Absolutely," she says, and steps back to give me room. "Take your time."
"I'd like to verify the crew at my door," I tell the dispatcher. "And I need to know whether I'm expected to agree to anything after today."
She confirms their names and the prepaid order. "There's no obligation to book another visit. You can decline today too."
"Will the person paying get a report about my house?" I ask.
"We confirm that the service was completed," the dispatcher says. "We don't give clients' personal information or observations to somebody else. If you'd like restrictions noted on the job, I can add them."
I look at the sticky patch in the hall. At this point it may be developing citizenship rights.
"All right," I say. "Today only. I'll decide about anything else myself."
I let them in.
By afternoon, I can see the hall floor again. The taller cleaner stops beside the couch, keeping her voice low for Clem.
"We're finished," she says. "Would you like to check anything before we go?"
"Did the sticky patch surrender?" I ask.
"Needed a little soaking," she says. "It's gone."
"Pity," I say. "I was about to ask it for rent."
The next day there's another knock.
This time it's a woman in her sixties with silver hair and credentials from a newborn care agency. She waits on the porch while I check them.
"Nina," she says. "I'm here for six hours today, if you want me. We can start with whatever would help most."
"I have a list," I tell her. "Unfortunately, the first item is a different husband, and I assume your insurance doesn't cover that."
Nina doesn't miss a beat. "Afraid not. What comes next?"
I swallow. The joke has used up most of my remaining composure. "She won't take a bottle today. I've tried three different kinds. I fed her, but I can't do everything forever without putting her down."
"Then let's start with feeding," she says, setting down her bag. "You can show me what you've tried. I won't change anything without talking to you."
I step aside. "Everybody says it gets easier. They never mention when."
"I won't make you a promise with a date on it," Nina says. "I can give you another pair of hands today. Where do you wash the bottles?"
I lead her into the kitchen and show her the drying rack. Three bottles, each accusing me of failing a different way.
"She took one in the hospital," I say. "I thought that meant we knew how."
She picks up the third bottle and turns it over. "We can try a slower flow and see how she manages. You'll stay right here while we do it. Tell me when she last ate."
I give her the time. Then I give it again, because I'm no longer sure I've said it aloud.
"I wrote it down," Nina says. "You don't have to remember everything twice."
"It's become a hobby," I tell her. "Remember, panic, check. Repeat until morning."
I rub my eyes. "I want to sleep without waking up convinced I've lost her."
"I'll be in the next room with her," Nina says, calm as still water. "You can leave both doors open. When you're ready, you can show me where she sleeps."
"Fine," I say. "But if I snore, that's between you and whatever deity handles confidentiality."
"I've heard worse," Nina says, and shakes out a blanket. "Let's make you comfortable."
Four hours later, I wake up on the couch with a blanket over me and no idea where I am.
For one terrible second I panic. Where's Clem?
Where's my baby? But then I hear the soft murmur of someone singing, and I sit up and see Nina rocking my daughter in my grandmother's old chair, feeding her from a bottle.
"She's taking it," I breathe.
"The slower-flow nipple seems to suit her better. She had time to settle into it." Nina smiles at me over Clem's head. "You've been asleep for four hours, honey. First time since the birth?"
My eyes fill, and I wipe my face with the back of my hand. "Can you come back tomorrow?"
"I'll be here at eight," she says.
On the fourth morning, Carmen, a round-faced woman in her fifties with flour permanently worked into the creases of her knuckles, puts a cooler on the counter and hands me a menu.
"You choose what sounds good," she says. "Anything you don't want, cross it off."
Lasagna, chicken soup, blueberry muffins, and the noodle dish from the restaurant where Taz and I used to go on dates. I stop reading.
"How do you know what I like?" I ask.
"I was given a list," Carmen says. "A detailed one. But I'd rather hear from you. Tastes change."
"Apparently memory improves dramatically after a separation," I say.
Carmen sets a chopping board beside the sink. She doesn't pretend she didn't hear me, and she doesn't ask for details.
"What would you like for lunch?" she asks.
"The soup," I tell her. "And the muffins, if that's not ridiculous."
"Lunch is allowed to have muffins," Carmen says. "There's no committee."
"I'd like that embroidered on a pillow," I say.
She washes her hands. "Any allergies? Anything that's been bothering you?"
We go through the list. She writes down what I say, including that I'd rather have smaller portions packed separately than one enormous container I have to excavate while holding Clem.
"I can label them by date," she says. "And you can tell me if a dish doesn't work. You won't hurt my feelings."
I laugh despite myself. She begins chopping, and I sit at my grandmother's table with the menu in my hand. He remembered the noodles. I wish remembering them didn't hurt.
By the fifth day, I can't take it anymore.
I grab my phone and I type one word.
STOP.
The reply comes within minutes.
Yes. No more unrequested deliveries. I should have asked what you wanted before arranging anything.
Nina and Carmen are yours to keep or send away; they work for you now, not me.
The words blur on the screen. I keep staring anyway.
I could throw the phone against the wall, except I need it and the wall has done nothing to me. Calling him would end in screaming. A text could be crueler, a message he could read again when he's alone. I hate that I'm considering which would hurt him most.
But there's another part. A smaller part, a traitor part, that noticed he actually stopped the part I asked him to stop.
That noticed he didn't argue or push back or try to explain himself into more access.
He said he'd stop new things and he did.
He left the existing help as my choice, not his demand.
I block the number anyway.
I do it because I need the boundary, not because I want to hurt him.
I do it because every time I see his name my chest cracks open and everything inside spills out, and I can't afford to feel that much right now.
There's a baby who needs me and a life to figure out.
I can't keep getting ambushed by my own grief.
The number disappears from my contacts and I feel—
Nothing. I don't feel relieved or powerful or in control. I just feel tired. Tired down to the bone, and I still have to get through the rest of my life somehow.
I look at the full fridge. At the clean floors. At the bassinet where my daughter is sleeping peacefully because Nina taught me the swaddle technique that finally works.
I open the fridge. Carmen's soup is labeled by date in her neat block capitals. Next to it sits a jar of the dill pickles I ate through my whole first trimester, the brand I never told anyone about but him. I shut the door and press my forehead against it until the cold goes all the way through.
But I keep Nina's number anyway. And Carmen's.
Because my daughter needs to eat, and I need to sleep, and surviving isn't the same as forgiving.