Chapter 3
Rebecca recovered faster than I did.
“What are you doing?” she asked, her voice light but sharp around the edges.
I folded the receipt in my palm. “I found this under the flower stand.”
She walked toward me in pale suede boots that made no sound on the polished floor. “So?”
“It has a note on it.”
“People write notes.”
“Who’s M?”
Her eyes flicked over my face. “Probably Nicole. Maybe one of the staff. Why are you acting weird?”
“I’m asking a question.”
“No, Liz, you’re doing that thing.” She sighed, shifting the garment bag from one arm to the other. “The suspicious wounded-bird thing.”
The words landed exactly where she aimed them.
I could feel Nicole pretending not to listen from across the room, her clipboard clutched tight. Downstairs, silverware clattered. Somewhere in the kitchen, something sizzled in a pan and filled the air with butter and garlic.
Rebecca held out her hand. “Give it to me.”
“No.”
Her eyebrows lifted. That was Rebecca’s real face—not the glowing sister, not the delicate mother-to-be. The girl who used to snap the heads off my dolls and cry first so I would get blamed.
“Fine,” she said. “Keep your trash. Just don’t bring your mood tomorrow.”
“My mood?”
“Yes. Everyone is tired of tiptoeing around you.”
My throat tightened. “No one tiptoes around me.”
“Because you make it impossible.” She stepped closer, lowering her voice. “Do you know how exhausting it is? Mom can’t even be happy for me without wondering whether you’ll spiral. Dad says Daniel looks trapped. Even Michael thinks—”
She stopped.
I caught it. “Michael thinks what?”
Rebecca’s nostrils flared. “Nothing.”
“What does Michael think?”
She smiled again, but it looked painted on. “He thinks you’re dramatic. Everyone does.”
A year earlier, that sentence would have destroyed me. That day, it only made me tired.
“Enjoy your party,” I said.
I walked past her toward the elevator.
Her voice followed me. “You know, Liz, some women are meant to be mothers, and some are meant to decorate nurseries for women who can actually keep babies.”
The elevator doors opened.
I stepped inside before she could see my face collapse.
In the parking lot, I sat in my car for ten minutes, shaking so hard I couldn’t fit the key into the ignition. The receipt lay on the passenger seat like a little white accusation.
M said: not enough last time.
Not enough what?
I should have called Daniel. Instead, I called the one person who never made me feel ashamed for needing help.
“Helen?” I said when she picked up.
“Elizabeth? Honey, what’s wrong?”
I hadn’t realized I was crying until I heard my own breath break.
Helen Watson was Daniel’s aunt, though she had become something else to me—part mother, part general, part lighthouse. She lived in Chicago and spoke with the blunt kindness of someone who had survived enough to stop decorating the truth.
“Rebecca said something awful,” I managed.
“That doesn’t narrow it down.”
Despite myself, I laughed once, a broken sound.
I told her about the presentation. The texts. The receipt. The note.
Helen was silent for a few seconds. In that silence, I heard street noise on her end, a horn, wind against a phone microphone.
“Take a picture of the receipt,” she said.
“I have the receipt.”
“Good. Photograph both sides anyway. Send them to me and Daniel. Then put the original somewhere safe.”
“You think it means something?”
“I think people who love you don’t talk to you like that. And I think when something feels wrong, you stop convincing yourself it’s manners.”
I looked through the windshield at the gray sky pressing low over the city. “I don’t want to go tomorrow.”
“Then don’t.”
“If I don’t, she wins.”
Helen exhaled. “Elizabeth, this is not a game.”
I closed my eyes.
But in my family, everything had always been a game. Who got praised. Who got blamed. Who had to apologize first. Who could endure humiliation with the prettiest smile.
By the time I got home, Daniel was in the living room with his laptop open and his tie loosened. He stood as soon as he saw me.
“What happened?”
I handed him the receipt.
He read it once. Then again. His expression changed in a way that made my stomach drop.
“Liz,” he said carefully, “where did you find this?”
“At the restaurant.”
He looked toward the stairs, then back at me. “Rebecca called me an hour ago.”
My mouth went dry. “Why?”
“She asked whether you’d been taking any medication after the miscarriage.”
The room seemed to tilt.
Daniel’s face was pale now. “I thought it was strange, so I asked why. She said Mom wanted to know because you seemed unstable.”
Mom.
M.
The radiator hissed behind me.
May you like
For months, I had wondered why grief had made my body feel poisoned.
And now, for the first time, I wondered whether grief had been the only thing inside me.
