“It’s going to be okay,” I told him. I wasn’t sure which of us I was reassuring.
Part Four: The Morning After
They arrived at 9:15 the following morning.
I had been awake since six, fed and bathed and dressed, my son in my arms. Martin had arrived at eight, along with a colleague — a younger woman named Grace who specialized in family law and had a manner of absolute calm that I found, under the circumstances, deeply comforting. They sat on the chairs near the window. We drank bad hospital coffee and reviewed everything one final time.
When Daniel came through the door, I almost didn’t recognize him. The easy confidence that I had spent three years watching him wear like a second skin — it was gone. He was pale and unshaven, his shirt the same one he’d been wearing last night. He was carrying flowers: a gas-station bouquet, pink and white, still wrapped in plastic. It was, I thought, exactly the wrong gesture delivered in exactly the wrong way — the flowers of a man who had googled “what to bring to apologize to your wife” at 7 AM and gone with the first result.
Elaine was behind him, her composure more intact but visibly effortful. Melissa was not there.
