PART 1
Three weeks after I gave birth, I was exhausted almost all the time. So when I finally got my newborn down for a nap one afternoon, I lay beside her and passed out too.
I don’t know how long I’d been asleep when voices downstairs woke me.
At first I assumed my husband had come home early from work. Then I heard a woman’s voice and realized it was my mother-in-law.
That woke me up fast. I hadn’t let her in. I hadn’t even known she was coming. Then I remembered the emergency key we’d given her after the baby was born.
I was about to head downstairs when I heard her say:
“And what happens when she goes back to work?”
“We’ll figure it out,” Wes replied.
“You said you’d handle this.”
“Mom, keep your voice down. She’s sleeping.”
I stopped halfway out of the bedroom. There was a pause, and then my mother-in-law lowered her voice.
“She can never know.”
Okay. That was enough.
I went straight down the stairs. The second I walked into the kitchen, they both stopped talking.
“What can I never know?”
Wes just stared at me, but his mother recovered quickly.
“I came over to talk about the baby.”
“With my husband? While I’m asleep?”
She sighed. “You need help, especially once you go back to work.”
Suddenly I knew where this was going. She had been pushing to watch our daughter instead of us using daycare since the day she was born. I’d thanked her more than once, but Wes and I had already made our decision.
Or so I thought.
“I can take her five days a week,” she said. “There’s no reason to pay strangers when I’m available.”
“We already have a daycare arranged.”
She turned to Wes. “You didn’t tell her?”
I turned to him too. “Tell me what?”
He rubbed the back of his neck. “Brynn… let’s talk about this later.”
“Wes.”
He exhaled and admitted it. He had canceled our daycare spot.
I was furious, but at least the conversation I’d overheard made sense now. They had been talking about childcare.
At least, that’s what I thought.
A few days later his mother came over again. I was upstairs with the baby when I heard the two of them arguing in the hallway. I wasn’t trying to listen, until I heard her say:
“You told me it was over.”
“Mom, not here.”
“No. I’m done covering for you.”
I froze.
Covering for him?
I started for the stairs, but that was exactly when the baby began to cry. By the time I’d settled her and come down, my mother-in-law was gone. Wes was in the kitchen drinking water.
“What was that about?”
“Nothing. She was angry about the daycare thing.”
“She said, ‘You told me it was over.’ What was over?”
“This argument.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“Brynn, I’m tired.”
“So am I.”
He shut the fridge harder than necessary, and I let it go. But I knew now that the conversation I’d overheard the first time hadn’t only been about daycare.
For the next few days I couldn’t stop hearing her words. Then I started noticing things. Wes carried his phone into the shower. He set it face down whenever it was on the table. He stepped outside to take certain calls.
Maybe exhaustion was making me paranoid. That’s what I told myself.
Then one evening, after I finally got the baby to sleep, I went downstairs for some water and heard Wes in the laundry room. I almost walked past, until I heard how he was talking. His voice was soft. Affectionate. I couldn’t remember the last time he’d spoken to me like that.
“Yeah, sweetheart. I know.”
I stopped dead.
Then he laughed quietly. “Tomorrow. Same time.”
I walked straight to the laundry room and pushed open the door. Wes spun around and ended the call the second he saw me.
“Who the hell was that?”
PART 2
Wes didn’t answer, and that scared me more than a quick lie would have.
“Who was that?”
“Brynn, you’re going to wake the baby.”
“Don’t do that. Don’t use her every time you don’t want to answer me.”
His face tightened. “It was nobody.”
“You called nobody ‘sweetheart’?”
