Chapter 2
Ethan had nodded in that meeting. He had the expression he wore when he was performing attentiveness, which looked similar to actual attentiveness and was not.
The first contraction came while I was in the kitchen. The glass I was holding hit the floor before I understood what was happening, and the sound of it shattering was the last ordinary sound of that evening. I called for him. He was in the kitchen doorway already, charcoal suit, hair combed, watch catching the light above the counter, and his phone rang before I could finish the sentence.
Patricia's voice came through the speaker. She said don't tell me Madison is pulling one of her stunts. She said if you miss my champagne toast I will be humiliated. She said these things while I was folded over the kitchen counter with sweat soaking through my dress and another contraction building behind the first one, and Ethan stood in the kitchen doorway and listened to his mother and looked at me with the expression of a man who has already made his decision and is simply waiting for the current moment to end so he can act on it.
He said I always did this. He said I turned everything into an emergency the moment his family needed him. He said I could wait a couple of hours.
Then he picked up his keys and walked out.
The beep came a second later.
May you like
I stood in the kitchen with blood spreading across the white tile floor and the deadbolt locked from the outside and the understanding arriving in the specific cold way that terrible understandings arrive, completely and all at once, that my husband had made a calculation and the calculation was that his mother's birthday party was worth more than whatever happened to me next.
I do not remember deciding to call 911. I remember being on the floor near the entryway with my phone in my hand and the dispatcher's voice coming through it and my own voice saying my husband locked me in, I am alone, I am bleeding, please, and I remember my grip failing. I do not remember the door coming down. I was told later that the responding officers used a ram on the steel-core door and that the hallway had enough blood on it that the first paramedic through asked the dispatcher to confirm the nature of the call because the scene did not match a standard labor and delivery.
