Chapter 1: The Cold Floor Where I Held Him
The carpet was so cold it burned through my burgundy pants. I sat cross-legged in front of the big frosted window with the snow stacked white against the glass, and held my son against my chest so tight I could feel his tiny breaths through the white textured swaddle and the light blue blanket underneath. His light blue knit hat had slipped a little to the side. The transparent-sided bassinet was right there to my right with its light blue blanket folded inside, empty, because I couldn't put him down on that floor. My teeth weren't chattering. I was past that.
The front door opened and the cold got worse before it got better. He stood in the left side of my vision in his dark navy coat over his gray collared shirt, his black hard-shell rolling suitcase handle still in his hand, his black smartphone in the other. He hadn't shaved. He looked at me on the floor, at the baby, at the bassinet, and his worried expression didn't change so much as settle deeper, like he'd been bracing for this the whole drive home.
My name is Wendy and I was twenty-nine and seven days postpartum that afternoon.
At 19:22 his phone lit up my face. I watched his thumb move. He didn't take his coat off. He just stood there breathing slow, and the apartment stayed silent except for the faint hum of the refrigerator that was somehow still running even though the heat wasn't. There was frost on the inside corner of the window. I had been staring at it for an hour so I wouldn't stare at the thermostat that read 52 and wouldn't click on no matter how many times I pressed it. He lowered the phone enough for me to see it.
He held the black smartphone out, screen up. The banking app was open with its header and rows of accounts, green toggles on the right side. I saw the numbers before he said them. $3.00. $2.00. Another line with $0.00. The time at the top said 19:22. He looked down at it then back at me, somber and focused, and his lips parted. I could see his breath.
He said, "Wendy."
I didn't answer. My arms were full and my feet were bare and going numb against the light carpet.
He said, "Where's the heat?"
I shook my head once. It wasn't that I didn't know. It was that I didn't know how to say it without making it sound like I was making it up.
He said, "Your mother said you canceled everything."
That was the line I'd been waiting to hear all day, the one she'd told me she would tell him if he called. I felt my throat close. I had not canceled anything. I had called the gas company that morning when the apartment was already cold and the lady on the phone had said the account was closed per customer request two days earlier. I had checked our checking account after that and seen the balances that were now on his phone.
He turned the phone slightly and his voice went flatter.
"Every dollar."
He wasn't shouting. He was just stating it, and the quiet was worse. He held the phone tighter and swiped, and the banking app disappeared and was replaced by a four-panel security camera grid. Each little square showed the same view from different angles - me on the floor in my olive pajama top with the light piping, holding the baby, the black suitcase beside us in the frame, the bassinet by the window. Timestamps ran across the bottom of each panel. It was us, from above, from the corner, from the hallway.
He said, "You forgot the cameras."
I hadn't forgotten them. I hadn't known he'd left them recording while he was gone. I looked up from the grid and over his shoulder, and for a second the focus shifted past him. Beyond the apartment wall, blurred like it was already happening, was a hospital bed with a white blanket and the same bassinet pulled close. I was in it, holding the same baby under the same white and light blue swaddle. I blinked and it was just our apartment again, but the image stayed behind my eyes.
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"Now I know exactly what happened."
He didn't move to pick us up. He didn't reach for the thermostat or for me. He just stood there with the phone in his hand and the suitcase at his side, staring at the little grid that showed me not moving from that cold floor, waiting for me to explain what he'd already seen.
