Chapter 4
When I turn back from the empty hallway, the leather document case on my desk is open.
I left it closed beneath my father’s compass before lying down. Now my passport and spare credit card are gone, although my birth certificate and marriage license remain exactly where I placed them.
So are my car keys.
I search twice, even though the emptied compartments are too deliberate to be an accident. By the second time, our daughter is pressing low against my spine, and I have to brace both hands on the desk until the ache passes.
Julian answers on the fourth call.
“Did you take my things?”
There is a pause filled with voices and the clink of breakfast dishes. He is downstairs, eating with the family he moved into my rooms.
“I put them somewhere secure.”
“From whom?”
“From an eight-months-pregnant woman trying to leave while she’s angry.” His voice remains calm, which somehow makes the control inside the words feel cleaner and more complete. “You can have them when we’ve spoken rationally.”
I look at the unlocked bedroom door. “You moved me into a room I can’t lock and removed the things I need to leave it.”
“I’m protecting you.”
The line goes quiet after that, as if protection is a complete answer.
My prenatal appointment is at ten. Julian promised to drive me before Leo fell into the water, and some humiliating part of me waits to see whether he remembers.
At nine thirty, I receive a message from his assistant: Mr. Harrow is attending Leo’s school meeting and will need to reschedule.
My appointment is not his to reschedule.
I order a car with the payment account saved on my phone. At the front gate, security calls Julian for permission before letting me pass. The driver watches me through the mirror while I sit behind him in yesterday’s loose dress, still smelling faintly of harbor water.
By the time the doctor wraps the blood-pressure cuff around my arm, my hands have stopped shaking.
Her face has not.
“This is much higher than last week,” she says. “Have you experienced unusual stress?”
I almost laugh. The sound rises into my throat and stays there.
“My husband introduced me to his seven-year-old son yesterday.”
The doctor’s hand stills over my chart. She asks whether I feel safe at home.
I think of Mara’s toiletries beside Julian’s razor, my nightgowns in the maid’s arms, and the passport hidden somewhere I am not permitted to search.
“No,” I say, and hearing it aloud makes my stomach tighten.
The doctor wants someone to collect me. I call my brother, Daniel, in Seattle. I have not told him anything yet, so I begin with the fact easiest to prove.
“Julian has a son.”
Silence. Then a chair scrapes sharply on his end of the call.
“Where are you?”
Not *Are you sure?* Not *What did you do?*
Where are you?
My knees give way, and I sit hard on the examination table. The first sob tears out before I can stop it. Daniel does not ask for proof, an explanation, or whether leaving Julian will embarrass the family. He asks where I am because he is already coming to get me.
Daniel arranges a hotel and tells me he can be on a flight that evening, but I refuse to wait without protecting myself first. The nurse lends me a charger, and from the examination room I contact a divorce attorney.
When the attorney asks whether I am certain, I look down at the pale band of skin beneath my wedding ring.
“Prepare the papers.”
Julian calls while I am still speaking. I let his name brighten the screen until it disappears.
I leave my ring and document case with the nurse until Daniel arrives, then enter the car Julian sent; he has made the family dinner the price of my passport.