Chapter 6 - The Floor He Left Bare Found Him First
I hadn't made it farther than the driveway when I heard his car turn back onto our street.
I was sitting in my own car with the engine off and the windows cracked, my hospital bag on the passenger seat where I'd dropped it after I carried everything else out. The sun was still high and white through the windshield. My hands were shaking on the steering wheel and I told myself it was just the weight of the baby pressing low. Then I heard the tires on the concrete and I ducked down a little without thinking, like a kid playing hide and seek.
It was the silver SUV at first. It slowed in front of our house and didn't stop. It rolled past and kept going toward the cul-de-sac. A second later Derek's sedan came behind it and pulled hard into our driveway. The brakes squeaked. The door slammed.
I stayed where I was. I could see straight through our front window from where I'd parked across the apron. He went in through the front door without taking his keys out, like he'd left it unlocked. He still had on the navy polo and khaki shorts and his gray slip-ons. His sunglasses were pushed up on his head. The black rolling suitcase was gone. He must have left it in her car.
He didn't call my name. That was the first thing I noticed. He stood in the entryway and looked at the empty space where the duffel and the folder had been that morning. The wood floor was clean. The sun made a bright square by the door. He turned his head toward the stairs.
I got out of my car before I could talk myself out of it. My beige slip-ons were silent on the driveway. I slipped around to the back and let myself in through the sliding door off the patio, the one that always stuck. The house was quiet and hot inside. I could hear his steps upstairs.
I stopped at the end of the hall by the linen closet and just listened. The nursery door was open. He walked in and stopped dead. I heard the change in his breathing, the way it caught and then went shallow.
For a long second he didn't move. Then he started walking the room. I could hear his slip-ons on the bare wood, moving along the wall to the closet. The closet door slid open hard on its track. Silence. It shut again. His steps crossed to the windows. The blinds clattered as he lifted one and let it drop. He checked the second window the same way.
"Where —" he said under his breath. "What the hell."
I pressed my back against the hallway wall and put my hand over my belly. The baby shifted. I held still.
He walked back to the center of the room. I knew exactly what he was seeing because I'd left it that way that afternoon. Just the light wood crib against the far wall with the mattress in it, nothing else. No lamp. No boxes. No folded blankets. And on the bare floor in front of it, the white envelope lying flat where I'd set it down.
He didn't pick it up right away. His steps circled around it. I heard his watch clink against something, maybe the crib rail as he grabbed it.
Then his phone came out. I heard the taps, then ringing on speaker.
She didn't answer at first. He started pacing while it rang, his steps quick and uneven across the empty room. The sound echoed in a way it never had when the room was full.
"Pick up," he said. "Pick up the phone."
A pause. Then a voice, faint through the speaker. I couldn't make out the words, just the tone.
"I'm back at the house," he said, loud and tight. "No, I'm inside now. The whole — the nursery is empty. Everything's gone. Did you — no, listen to me. Was there a truck? Did someone come?"
Another pause. His pacing stopped.
"Don't tell me to calm down," he said. "Maya's car is still here. Her bag — I don't know where she is. There's an envelope on the floor and I'm not —" He cut himself off. His breathing filled the empty room. "Just get back here. No, now."
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He ended the call. I heard the phone hit something soft, maybe his palm, or the mattress. He didn't move toward the hall. He didn't bend down. I waited for the sound of paper tearing, but it never came.
After a minute his steps slowed and stopped by the crib again, and the house went quiet except for the low hum of the air conditioner kicking on.
