Chapter 12
1039 Words
ELENA
The groceries arrived.
Rosa didn't order them and they are certainly not from the delivery service we used before Rosa.
It was from Liam who walked through the apartment door at seven in the evening with paper bags in both hand. He looked satisfied because he had done something thoughtful and wanted credit for it.
I looked up from the book I was reading.
He set the bags on the counter and began unpacking with the focus of someone following a list.
Soft cheese. The good kind, from the place on Madison I had loved before the pregnancy made it inadvisable.
A container of pâté.
Unpasteurized juice from the artisan market on Lexington that I had been buying every week for three years before I stopped.
He arranged them on the counter with the satisfied air of a man who had solved something.
"I know you've been craving things," he said. "I thought I'd pick up some of your favorites."
I looked at the counter.
Every single item on it was on the list in my phone. The list I had made privately, on a Tuesday night two weeks ago, foods to avoid, things to double check. Not one or two items that someone might guess at randomly. All of them.
He had remembered all of it with and it should have felt like love.
"That's so thoughtful," I said.
"You've been so careful." He came around the counter and squeezed my shoulder. "You deserve a treat."
I smiled.
After dinner, I put the cheeses in the back of the refrigerator behind the things Rosa would reach for first. I put the juice on the counter where it would be visible. I did not open either.
At ten o'clock, Liam went to bed.
I sat in the living room for a long time after. The television was off and even when it was on, I wasn't really watching.
I just couldn't understand myself since that night. I felt off.
**
The insomnia started that week.
It was Tuesday where I woke at two and couldn't find my way back.
Then a Thursday.
Then two nights running the following week, lying in the dark with the city pressing orange through the curtains and Liam breathing steadily beside me.
I told myself it was the pregnancy.
The books said so. Rosa confirmed it since she had carried and raised three children.
First trimester sleep is terrible, she said, setting my herbal tea on the counter. Your body doesn't know what it's doing yet.
I drank the tea and agreed. I didn't mention that the waking always seemed to happen after something small like a sound, a vibration, the specific quality of a silence that had changed.
Liam's phone, mostly.
Not every night. Just often enough to build a shape I didn't examine. He kept it face down on the nightstand and the screen lit the ceiling sometimes in the early hours. I would lie very still and listen to him shift and reach for it and read whatever was there. He would set it back down and settle into sleep again.
**
On Wednesday morning he was already dressed when I came out of the bathroom.
He was standing at the nightstand with the vitamin bottle in his hand.
"You forgot last night," he said. He held it out.
I looked at it.
I had not forgotten. I had been to my own pharmacy three days ago. It was a place on 54th that had no connection to anyone in Liam's world and bought my own supplements. They were in my desk drawer at the gallery. I had been taking them there every morning before work for three days.
"I took it at work," I said. "I keep a spare. In case I forget in the morning."
He looked at me.
Something moved across his face — fast, controlled, resolved before I could name it. His eyes went to the bottle in his hand and back to me.
Then he set it on the nightstand and smiled.
"Smart," he said. "Just make sure they're the same formulation. Consistency matters."
"Of course," I said.
He kissed my forehead and left for work.
**
The hot pot suggestion came on Friday.
We were looking at takeout menus on a Friday night ritual that had survived four years of marriage largely because it required nothing of either of us. Liam set aside a sushi menu with mild regret.
"Mercury," he said. "Even the low-mercury fish adds up. I read that."
"I know," I said. "I've been avoiding it."
"Good."
He looked at the remaining menus.
"There's a place near the office that does incredible hot pot. I've been wanting to try it."
I looked at him.
Hot pot.
Shared broth.
Raw ingredients cooked at the table at temperatures that were never quite certain.
Everything the pregnancy books flagged about undercooking concentrated in a single dining experience. Liam had been reading those books. He had been quoting them to me for weeks.
He knew.
"I'll think about it," I said.
He nodded and moved on to talking about something at Carter Group. I sat across from him and ordered Thai food.
I ate it and said nothing.
After dinner, I went to the bathroom and stood at the mirror for a moment.
I pressed my hand flat against my stomach.
The baby was there. I couldn't feel her yet.
Too early, too small.
But I knew she was there the way you knew things that lived underneath everything else.
I went back to the living room. I sat beside Liam on the sofa. I let him put his arm around me and watched whatever he had put on the television and said nothing at all.
But when he went to bed I opened my phone.
The list was getting long now.
Things that don't add up.
I looked at it for a long time.
Then I moved everything from the first list into it.
Because that's what it was.
Not a list of coincidences or oversights.
It was a pattern.
I locked the phone then turned off the living room light.
I went to bed, but I did not sleep for a long time.
- Writer
