PART 3
The days that followed were quiet in the worst way — the kind of quiet that comes after a fight nobody has actually finished.
Caleb apologized. Then he un-apologized by explaining, again, why canceling daycare had been the responsible thing to do.
“Think about it,” he said one night, standing in the kitchen with his hands jammed in his pockets. “That money could go straight at the mortgage.”
“We could have decided that together. Like married people.”
“I know.”
“You keep saying that after you’ve already done the thing.”
He went quiet, and I let him, because I didn’t have the energy for round three. Between feeding Lily every two hours and forgetting entire meals and forgetting, some days, to brush my own hair, I simply ran out of fuel to keep fighting. I told myself we’d revisit it once I’d slept more than four consecutive hours in a row.
I did not know that the clock on that conversation had already run out days before I’d even overheard it.
A few evenings later, Diane came back. This time Caleb let her in himself, and I was upstairs nursing Lily when I heard their voices rise in the hallway below.
At first I ignored it. Mothers-in-law and sons argue. It’s practically a genre of its own.
Then Diane said something that made me stop rocking mid-motion.
“You told me it was over.”
Silence.
“Mom. Not here.”
