Dad glanced at him.
Then at me.
“You’re shaking.”
“I’m fine.”
“No.”
That one word broke something.
I looked down at my hands.
They were trembling.
Five days after giving birth, I was sitting in a car with stitches across my abdomen, swollen ankles, leaking milk through my blouse, and nowhere I considered home anymore.
“I thought he loved me,” I whispered.
Dad’s face softened.
“I know.”
“I kept telling myself it was stress. Work. The pregnancy. His mother.”
“Audrey.”
“I know.”
He waited.
That was one thing my father had always been good at.
He never rushed silence.
Finally, I said, “I made excuses for him.”
“Yes.”
“I let him humiliate me.”
“Yes.”
“I let his family treat me like I was lucky Dominic chose me.”
Dad leaned forward.
“But today you stopped.”
I looked at him.
He nodded toward Leo.
“And that matters more.”
My phone vibrated again.
This time it was a message.
WHAT DID YOU DO TO THE SUV?
Then another.
Call me right now.
Then:
You’re embarrassing me in front of my family.
I almost laughed.
Not one question about Leo.
Not one question about whether we had arrived safely.
Not one question about my incision.
Only the SUV.
Dad watched my expression.
“What did he say?”
“He wants to know what I did to the car.”
Dad leaned back.
“Of course he does.”
Twenty minutes later, we arrived at a townhouse on the Upper East Side.
It belonged to my father through a family trust and had been mostly empty for years except when he was in New York.
I had a bedroom there.
I had always had a bedroom there.
I just hadn’t used it since marrying Dominic.
Inside, a nurse was already waiting.
A postpartum nurse.
There was food.
Medication.
A bassinet.
Formula in case I needed it.
Diapers.
Ice packs.
Clean clothes.
Everything Dominic had failed to think about had been arranged in less than an hour.
That realization almost hurt more than anything else.
Dad didn’t have to be asked.
Dominic had been asked for years.
My phone rang again.
This time I answered.
“Where are you?” Dominic snapped.
No hello.
No concern.
I sat on the edge of the bed.
“Somewhere safe.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I’m not coming home tonight.”
Silence.
Then he laughed.
“You’re being dramatic.”
I closed my eyes.
“I had major surgery five days ago.”
“Women have C-sections every day.”
“And their husbands usually don’t put them on buses.”
“Oh, come on.”
There it was.
That tone.
The tone that turned every wound into an inconvenience.
“You had money.”
