I stood by the nursery door, holding Leo, who had a soiled diaper and was crying with a wet, heavy cough.
“Please,” I said, my voice dropping to a low, flat cadence. “Just hold him for five minutes while I change his sister.”
Ethan did not stop, stepping past me into the narrow space between the railing and the wall.
“I am late for a breakfast meeting with the regional director,” he said.
He did not look at the baby, nor did he look at me.
The click of the front door latch as Ethan walks out into the morning fog.
By ten o’clock, the morning fog had lifted from the tiny backyard of our house on Pine Street, but the nursery remained cold. The radiator in the corner gave a single, metallic clank and then went silent. I adjusted the collar of my cotton shirt with my left thumb, keeping my eyes on my mother, Rita, who sat in the heavy wooden rocking chair. She was fifty-eight years old, and her fingers were constantly moving, turning her gold wedding band around and around her finger.
