For one strange second, he looked almost hurt.
Then anger covered it.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
Kate stood carefully, keeping Ethan’s head supported.
“You told us to leave.”
“I didn’t mean tonight.”
“You said pack my things.”
“I say a lot of things when you push me.”
Kate looked at him.
The old Kate might have argued with that. She might have defended herself. Might have explained. Might have tried to find the exact combination of words that would make him understand her pain.
This Kate was too tired.
“No,” she said. “You said what you meant.”
Paul shut the door.
The apartment darkened again.
“You’re not taking my stuff.”
“I’m taking my son and my clothes.”
“My son now?”
Her face tightened.
“Our son,” she said.
He walked toward her.
Ethan stirred.
“Don’t,” Kate said.
Paul stopped, but only for a beat.
“You think you can run to Daddy and make me the villain?”
“I don’t have to make you anything.”
His laugh was sharp.
“There it is. Small-town martyr act.”
Kate said nothing.
“You know,” he continued, “my mother was right. I never should’ve married a small-town girl like you.”
The sentence hung between them.
Something in Kate went cold.
Not broken.
Cold.
Paul’s voice rose. “So now take that baby that isn’t mine and get out of my house.”
He pointed at the door.
The same door her father had paid to replace.
The brass lock caught the streetlight.
Kate noticed that, absurdly. How clean it looked. How proud Paul had been when it was installed. How he had run his thumb over the hardware and said, Now that’s a proper door.
She looked past him into the kitchen.
At the stove Tom’s money bought.
At the cabinets she had wiped down with swollen hands.
At the refrigerator filled with soup, bottles, and Mary’s jars of peaches.
Then she looked back at Paul.
“Fine,” she said.
He blinked.
Maybe he had expected tears.
Maybe he had expected screaming.
Maybe he had expected her to fold herself into the shape of his anger one more time.
But Kate did not cry.
She bent, picked up the diaper bag, and slipped the strap over her shoulder.
Paul’s mouth curled. “That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“You’re really walking out?”
“You told me to.”
“Don’t bother coming back.”
She nodded once.
Then she opened the door.
The hallway was colder than the apartment. Her bare feet hit the linoleum, and the chill went straight through her. She had forgotten her shoes. For half a second, she almost turned back.
Then Ethan made a soft sound in his sleep.
Kate pulled him closer and kept walking.
Behind her, Paul shouted something she did not turn around to hear.
The door slammed.
The sound echoed down the hallway like a final verdict.
Outside, the night smelled like snow and gasoline. The street was quiet except for the distant hiss of tires on wet pavement. Kate sat in her car with Ethan in her lap for one minute while the heater coughed weakly to life.
Her hands shook so badly she could barely buckle his car seat.
When she finally managed it, she rested her forehead against the edge of the seat.
“It’s all right,” she whispered. “We’re leaving now.”
She drove four blocks and pulled into the parking lot of a closed pharmacy because she did not trust herself to keep going.
Then headlights turned in behind her.
For one terrified second, she thought it was Paul.
But it was Tom’s old Ford.
He parked crooked across two spaces, got out in a flannel jacket, and walked straight to her car.
Kate opened the door.
This time, when she cried, she did not apologize.
Tom held her in the freezing parking lot while snow began to fall around them.
Over his shoulder, she saw her father’s jaw tighten as he looked at the baby seat, the duffel, her bare feet.
“Where are your shoes?” he asked quietly.
Kate looked down.
“I forgot.”
Tom took off his own coat and wrapped it around her shoulders.
Then he looked toward the road that led back to the duplex.
His anger was not loud.
It was worse than loud.
It was controlled.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go see what he thinks belongs to him.”
Part 10
By dawn, the duplex no longer felt like a home.
It felt like a ledger.
Tom walked through each room with Kate behind him, Ethan asleep in a carrier on her chest. The early light made everything look pale and exposed. The yellow nursery walls. The cream trim. The clean kitchen. The appliances Paul had called his.
Tom touched nothing at first.
He just looked.
The way farmers look at storm damage before deciding where to start.
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