Chapter 14: The Locks She Chose
By the time the nurse said we could take the baby home, I had practiced being afraid of the wrong things.
The car seat buckle. The cold air outside the hospital. The first quiet stretch when nobody could tell me what the monitor was doing. My baby was small and still needed careful watching, but their breathing was steady, and the nurse showed me one last time how to settle the blanket around them without covering their face.
I chose when we would go to the house. I chose the route. I asked Dad and Megan to come with me, and I asked them to stay until I said otherwise.
Nobody made the decision sound like a test.
My purse and phone had been returned through the investigation. They sat in a clear bag on my hospital chair, ordinary and strange at once: my wallet, a tube of lip balm, a receipt folded into a soft square. The phone was dark. I wasn’t ready to turn it on, so I tucked it into my purse and carried both myself.
At the house, Dad parked in the driveway. He didn’t get out first or walk ahead to check the door. He waited while I lifted the key from my pocket.
The metal teeth fit the changed lock.
For a moment, I held it there, feeling the little weight of it against my palm. This was the house Eric had left me outside of, then tried to pull me back into on his terms. It was also where I’d kept the first tiny clothes for the baby, and where sunlight fell across the kitchen table in the morning.
I turned the key.
The lock clicked. I opened the door.
Inside, the house smelled faintly of lemon cleaner and the closed-up stillness of a place waiting for someone to choose what happened next. Nothing had been fixed by a lock. The papers, the sale, the signature that wasn’t mine—all of that still existed somewhere beyond this doorway.
But Eric wasn’t standing in it.
I stepped across the threshold first.
Dad came in only after I moved aside. Megan followed with a small bundle gathered in her arms, wrapped in a plain cloth.
“I made this for the baby,” she said. Her gaze moved from me to the bundle and back. “I brought it, but I don’t want to put it anywhere without asking.”
I looked at the uneven edge where one corner had been stitched by hand. “You can show me.”
Megan unfolded the cloth. Inside was a pale yellow blanket, soft and light, with little white stars sewn along the border. One star sat slightly crooked. I touched it with my fingertip.
“I had to redo that one three times,” she said. A faint, uncertain smile appeared, then disappeared. “I kept pulling the thread too tight.”
“Can I put it beside the crib?” she asked.
Not on the baby. Not in my arms. Beside the crib.
“Yes,” I said. “Beside it.”
She carried the blanket down the hall and laid it on the chair near the crib. She didn’t touch anything else.
The baby slept in my arms, their cheek warm against my shirt. I stood in the nursery doorway and watched Megan step back from the blanket, leaving space around it as if space were something she could offer me.
“It’s nice,” I said.
Her eyes shone, but she didn’t ask me to say more.
In the kitchen, I set down my purse and took the house key from my pocket. Dad’s gaze flicked toward it, then away. He had kept the locks changed to keep Eric out; he hadn’t tried to tell me what to do with the door now.
“Who has a copy?” I asked.
“I have one,” Dad said. “I didn’t want you to be locked out if you needed help.”
I understood why he’d done it. I also knew what I needed.
“Would you give it to me for now?”
He reached into his pocket and placed his key in my open hand. No argument, no wounded pause. Just the cool weight of it joining mine.
“For now,” he said.
I put both keys in my purse.
“Megan, I don’t want you to have one either,” I said. “If I want company, I’ll invite you. If I need help, I’ll call.”
“I understand,” she said.
I looked at Dad. “And no one comes in because they think they’re helping. Not unless I say so.”
“I understand,” he said, quieter.
The words didn’t erase what had happened. They didn’t make the house mine to keep or make the papers disappear. But the entry plan was mine: I would carry the keys, and I would decide who crossed the threshold.
Megan stayed by the kitchen doorway, her hands empty now.
“You can stay awhile,” I told her. “If you want.”
She nodded. “I do.”
I woke the phone.
The screen brightened, and for one breath I was back on the road, reaching for it where it wasn’t. Then the familiar crack near the corner came into focus, along with a stack of missed notifications. I didn’t open them. I set the phone on the table beside my purse, and let the room settle around the sounds of the baby breathing, Dad rinsing a cup, Megan moving softly in the next room.
The phone vibrated.
I glanced down. A new message had slipped beneath the older notifications, its name unmistakable.
May you like
Eric.
Please. One last meeting. Just you and me. I need you to hear me before you decide what happens next.
