“No. I am done covering for you.”
I froze.
Covering for him. Those three words landed like ice water down my spine.
Lily stirred against my chest, sensing the shift in my body before I’d even moved. I stood, and of course that was the exact moment she decided to cry, loud and sudden, the way newborns do when the universe wants you distracted at precisely the wrong second.
“Shh. It’s okay. Mommy’s here,” I whispered, bouncing her, straining to hear anything else from downstairs. But their voices had already dropped to something too low to make out.
By the time I’d settled her and made it down the stairs, Diane was gone.
Caleb stood at the counter, drinking a glass of water like nothing had happened.
“What was that about?” I asked.
“What?”
“Your mother. I heard her.”
“She was upset about the daycare thing.”
“She said, ‘You told me it was over.’ Over — what?”
He opened the refrigerator and stared into it like the answer might be sitting on a shelf. “This argument. The daycare argument.”
“That doesn’t make any sense, Caleb.”
“I’m tired, Jess.”
“So am I.”
He shut the fridge harder than the moment required. “Can we not do this right now?”
I looked at him for a long time. Long enough that he had to notice. Then I turned and walked away, because I already understood something I couldn’t yet prove.
The first conversation I’d overheard hadn’t only been about daycare.
Something else was living underneath it.
Something Caleb believed, with his whole chest, that I would never find.
