a nursery.”
“The babies can sleep anywhere. They’re babies.”
Clara stared at the man she had married two years earlier in a courthouse garden under a sudden spring shower. Back then, Adam had seemed tender in a quiet, wounded way. He said he hated asking anyone for help. He said he wanted to build something of his own. He said Clara made him feel peaceful.
Now he looked at his premature daughters as if they were furniture that could be moved around to suit adults.
“And where will you sleep at your mother’s?” she asked.
Adam looked away.
That was answer enough.
“The den,” he muttered.
Clara laughed once. It did not sound like her.
“Your sister gets my apartment. You get the den. Your wife and newborn daughters get a laundry room.”
“Stop saying it like that.”
“Like what? Accurately?”
His face hardened.
“I already signed the temporary occupancy papers. Megan’s moving truck comes at six. I need you packed before then.”
For a moment, the only sound was rain ticking against glass.
Clara felt something cold open inside her chest.
“You signed what?”
Adam’s fingers tightened around his phone.
“Don’t make this legal. It’s family.”
The doorbell rang.
Adam flinched so violently Clara saw it from across the room.
It was not surprise. Surprise made people blink, turn, ask questions. Adam went pale all at once. His shoulders rose. His eyes darted toward the suitcase, then to the hallway table where the mail sat stacked beneath a ceramic bowl.
The bell rang again.
“Who is that?” Clara asked.
He did not answer.
He walked out of the nursery with the stiff, careful steps of a man approaching a verdict. Clara held both babies tighter, her heartbeat suddenly loud in her ears.
From where she sat, she could see the apartment door reflected in the dark television screen across the living room. Adam opened it only halfway.
Then his mouth parted.
Two men stood in the hall beneath black umbrellas, rain shining on their coats.
Julian Bell and Miles Bell.
Clara’s older brothers.
Julian, who ran a medical logistics company and had the unnerving calm of a man who could close a failing deal without raising his voice. Miles, who had turned a software security startup into something newspapers called unreasonably successful, though he still texted Clara pictures of ugly dogs when he thought she was sad.
They were not men Adam liked seeing unexpectedly.
They were not men Adam liked seeing at all.
“Adam,” Julian said.
Just his name. Nothing more.
Adam swallowed. “This isn’t a good time.”
Miles looked past him into the apartment. His eyes moved over the suitcase, the unfolded baby blankets on the couch, the bottles by the sink, Clara on the nursery floor with both twins in her arms.
His jaw tightened.
“Looks like we came at exactly the right time,” Miles said.
Julian stepped inside. Adam moved as if to block him, then thought better of it.
“Clara,” Julian said, his voice gentling as soon as he saw her clearly. “Are you safe?”
The question almost broke her.
Not are you fine. Not how are the babies. Safe.
She opened her mouth and found she did not trust her voice.
Adam gave a brittle laugh. “For God’s sake, she’s sitting in her
