The heavy gold watch on Caleb’s wrist clicked against the granite countertop as he reached for the coffee pot, a sharp metal sound that seemed too loud for seven in the morning. A tiny smear of orange grease from his chorizo scramble sat near the crown of the watch, but he did not seem to notice.
“You need to eat more than that, babe,” he said, pointing his fork toward my half-empty plate. “You’re eating for two now, remember?”
I smoothed my hand down my maternity top and rubbed my silver wedding band, the metal cool against my skin, wondering why he had suddenly stopped looking me in the eye. The central air conditioner hummed in the background, a steady vibration through the floor of our six-bedroom brick house, a house my grandmother had spent forty years maintaining before she left it to me.
“I’m just tired, Caleb,” I said, setting the spatula in the sink. “The doctor said the pressure in my ankles is normal for thirty-six weeks, but I would feel much better if you stayed close.”
Caleb did not look up from his phone screen, his fingers moving rapidly as he typed. He gave his heavy gold watch another winding turn, a habit he kept up three or four times a day, always right before he had to justify his schedule.
“We talked about this,” he said, his voice rising with that booming confidence he used when he was closing a deal for Oak Creek Contracting. “My mother has had a brutal year, and Brooke needs a break from the city. They need this beach trip, and I’m the only one who can drive the big SUV all the way to North Carolina.”
“But the baby is due in early September,” I said. “That is barely three weeks away.”
He finally looked at me, his smile wide and bright, the same look he gave clients when he was asking for a larger down payment on a job he had not started.
“It is only a week, Claire, so do not make a scene,” he said.
I kept my fingers wrapped around my wedding band, watching his hand slide over his leather wallet on the counter.
