“No,” I said. “You love being forgiven.”
He cried then. Actually cried. Shoulders shaking, breath breaking. A month earlier, the sight would have wrecked me. I would have reached for him. I would have soothed him, because I had spent years treating his guilt as another household task.
But I was holding Noah.
There was no room in my arms for Jack’s self-pity.
“I want you to leave,” I said.
He looked up, terrified.
“Emily, please.”
“I’m going to call a lawyer today. You can communicate through them.”
“Don’t do this.”
“You did this.”
He tried to step closer, but I shifted Noah protectively against me. That stopped him more effectively than shouting.
“My son,” he said weakly.
I looked down at the sleeping baby.
“Yes,” I said. “Your son. The one you missed being born because you were holding the hand of a woman who lied to you.”
The cruelty of the sentence was not in how sharp it was. It was in how true it was.
Jack left without touching Noah.
The divorce began three days later.
I did not go back to our condo. Mike drove me from the hospital to a short-term rental in Queen Anne that my attorney found through a client. It was small, with old hardwood floors, a view of wet rooftops, and radiators that clicked through the night. The couch was too firm. The kitchen window stuck. The bedroom barely fit the bassinet.
It was the safest place I had ever slept.
My attorney’s name was Celeste Ward. She was sixty-one, elegant, terrifying, and allergic to emotional nonsense. She arrived the second afternoon wearing a camel coat and carrying a legal pad.
