Chapter 6
My father's kitchen smelled like coffee that had been on too long and the toast he always burned a little on one side. The light over his table was the same flat white it had been since I was twelve, humming faintly. I sat with my hands around a mug I couldn't drink. My daughter was on the floor with a plastic tub of crayons, her yellow dress from yesterday folded clean on the back of a chair. My belly pressed against the edge of the table and I kept shifting, trying to find a way to breathe easy.
He hadn't slept. I could see it under his eyes, in the way he kept wiping the same spot on the counter. He'd put a blanket over me on his couch the night before and checked the lock on his apartment door twice, the old deadbolt that clicked loud. Now he set a plate down in front of me even though I told him I wasn't hungry.
"You didn't eat at the hospital," he said.
I nodded. My throat was still raw.
My phone buzzed against the laminate. Again. I'd left it face-up so he could see it too. The screen lit up: Where are you. Answer me. Then, a minute later: You can't just take her.
My father stared at it. His jaw tightened.
"That's how it started last time," he said quietly. He didn't look at me when he said it. He looked out his kitchen window at the parking lot. "Last March. You called me from the grocery store parking lot. You said the lock wasn't working and he wouldn't let you back in until you apologized."
I remembered. I hadn't told him everything then. I'd made it sound smaller.
"It wasn't broken," I said. "He changed the code."
He nodded. "You said you stood out there with her in the cart for forty minutes."
I felt my daughter's crayon roll against my foot. My eyes burned.
He sat down across from me and folded his hands. His knuckles were red. "Lena, I need to tell you what I've seen. That lease is only in his name. He told you it was credit reasons, right? Your cards stopped working in June. You said it was fraud. And your car — you said the battery died and he didn't want to fix it."
I didn't answer. Each one landed because it was true. He'd said the penthouse lease had to be his for the building's approval, that joint accounts were cleaner, that we only needed one car because I wasn't working. I had believed it meant security.
"He never raised his voice in front of me," my father went on. "Not once at dinner. But when I called last month, he answered your phone and told me you were napping and not to come by."
My breathing got shallow. I pressed my palm flat on the table to steady it.
"I remember when he had that lock installed," I said. My voice came out thinner than I wanted. "He said it was for safety. The building had a break-in. He let me watch him program it. He said it was so we wouldn't need keys with the baby. He kept saying it was for me, so I wouldn't get locked out with groceries. But then he started changing it when I had plans with you. He'd say I'd forgotten the new number. He'd make me text him to get in."
I could see it clearly now — his hand over the silver and black panel, his back blocking my view, the soft beep when he set the code I didn't know.
My father reached across and covered my hand. His hand was warm and dry.
"Your old card was tied to his account," he said. "When he cut it, you had no way out. That's not an accident."
My daughter babbled and pushed a crayon drawing toward my ankle. A circle with lines. I bent, slow with the weight in front of me, and picked it up.
My phone buzzed again. Please. Come home and we'll talk. Your stuff is here. You left your prenatal vitamins. Then another, softer: I love you guys. I'm sorry. Don't do this.
I stared at the words. The apology hooked something in me that wanted to believe it. That was the pattern too.
"If I block him, I lose everything still in that apartment," I said. "Her birth certificate. My clothes. The crib we haven't built yet."
"If you keep it open, he keeps a door to you," my father said. He didn't tell me what to do. He just let the silence sit.
I thought about the marble floor, the lock beeping, his hand on my face on that sofa. I thought about the nurse telling me to rest and the photos on my phone that now had a timestamp.
"I can't go back there alone," I said finally. "Not for any of it."
"Good," he said, and his shoulders dropped a fraction.
"But I'm not blocking him," I said. I slid the phone toward him so we both could see it. "If he writes, it's proof. If he threatens, it's proof. I need proof more than I need quiet."
He looked at me a long time, then nodded once.
"We keep everything," he said. "We screenshot. We don't answer emotional. We answer once, short, and we save it. And you don't go near that door without me or without a deputy. That's the deal."
I felt my daughter climb into my lap. She was warm. She smelled like apple juice. I held her against me, my hand spread over her back and my other hand resting on my belly where the baby moved, a slow roll under my dress.
May you like
"Deal," I whispered.
The phone lit up again, but I didn't touch it. I let it buzz. I let my father see it buzz. Outside his kitchen window, the morning traffic started on the road below, ordinary and loud, and for the first time since the door had beeped locked, I didn't have to answer right away.
