hair was tangled. Her eyes looked glassy.
‘Hey,’ I said softly. ‘You okay?’
She looked toward the hallway before answering.
‘I’m tired.’
‘Are you eating?’
‘Some.’
My mother’s voice cut in from off-screen. ‘She ate plenty. Don’t interrogate her.’
Claire flinched. It was small. Almost nothing. But I saw it.
‘Claire?’
Tessa leaned into the frame with a bright artificial smile. ‘She’s emotional. Hormones are wild after birth.’
I heard Lily crying somewhere nearby, thin and insistent.
‘Why isn’t she holding the baby?’ I asked.
Mom took the phone. Her face filled the screen.
‘Because I told her to rest. You asked us to help. Let us help.’
‘I didn’t ask you to take over.’
Her expression cooled.
‘Careful, Marcus.’
That word worked on me because she had trained it to work. Careful meant I was ungrateful. Careful meant I was becoming like my father, who left when I was nine. Careful meant she was about to remind me of bills she had paid, lunches she had packed, fevers she had sat through.
I swallowed my anger.
‘Just let me talk to my wife.’
‘Tomorrow,’ she said, and ended the call.
The next morning, I finished the Tucson paperwork earlier than expected. My manager told me to get a hotel and drive back after resting. Instead, I drank gas station coffee, bought a stuffed white rabbit from a pharmacy rack, picked up Claire’s favorite lemon cookies, and drove home with the sunrise burning orange over the highway.
By the time I reached Phoenix, my eyes stung from exhaustion. I climbed the stairs to our apartment and noticed immediately that the doormat was crooked. Claire always straightened it with her foot. Always.
The door was unlocked.
Not slightly loose. Unlocked.
I pushed it open.
The apartment was cold even though it was already warming outside. The television flickered silently in the living room. Dirty bottles sat in the sink. A sour towel lay near the couch. My mother slept under a throw blanket, one hand curled around the remote. Tessa sat in my recliner, awake, scrolling on her phone with her legs tucked under her.
She looked up, startled.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘Where are Claire and Lily?’
‘Bedroom.’ She stood too quickly. ‘But don’t wake them. Claire had a rough night.’
Then I heard it.
A sound from behind the half-closed bedroom door.
Not a real cry. Not the loud, angry newborn cry I had started to recognize.
This was dry. Thin. Almost gone.
I dropped the pharmacy bag and ran.
The bedroom curtains were drawn. The air was stale and hot. Claire lay twisted on the bed, her shirt soaked through, her face gray beneath a shine of sweat. One wrist was looped to the metal bedframe with her own blue scarf. The knot was loose enough to pretend it wasn’t a restraint, tight enough that she could not reach the bassinet.
But Lily wasn’t in the bassinet.
She was beside Claire on the mattress, wrapped in a dirty blanket, her face red, her mouth open in a weak silent cry.
‘Claire!’
I touched my wife’s cheek. Fire.
I lifted Lily. Worse.
My daughter felt like a coal wrapped in cloth.
Behind me, my mother appeared in the doorway, rubbing sleep from her face.
‘Why are you yelling?’
