Chapter 3: Three Words Through a Door
I didn't move.
Leo was asleep against Dad's chest.
The room was quiet.
The door was almost shut.
I looked at my father.
He had heard it too.
He said nothing, but his jaw tightened in the way it always did when he was deciding something.
I stood up slowly, crossed the room, and opened the door the rest of the way.
Rowan spun around.
The phone was already at his side, screen dark.
"Who was that?" I said.
"Work," he said.
Too fast.
"On a Monday afternoon.
After three days away."
"Phoebe, don't start—"
"Who said she knows everything, Rowan?"
His mouth opened.
Closed.
He glanced past me at my father, and something moved across his face — not guilt, exactly.
Calculation.
"It was nothing," he said.
"A misunderstanding about a project timeline."
"A project timeline," I repeated.
"Yes."
I looked at him for a long moment.
Then I stepped back and let him into the room.
He sat in the chair closest to the door.
Not beside me.
Not beside Leo.
Closest to the exit.
Dad handed Leo to me without being asked.
He stood, buttoned his coat, and looked at Rowan with the particular patience of a man who has watched other men lie to him across boardroom tables for forty years.
"I'll give you both some privacy," Dad said.
"Phoebe, I'll be just downstairs."
He paused at the door.
"It was good to finally meet you, Rowan."
Rowan said nothing.
After Dad left, the room felt smaller.
"You should have told me," Rowan said.
His voice had shifted — softer now, almost wounded.
"About your father.
About who he was.
That's not a small thing to keep from your husband."
"I know," I said.
"So why didn't you?"
I looked down at Leo.
His small fist was curled against his cheek.
"Because I wanted to know if you'd love me without it," I said.
"And I got my answer."
Rowan stood up.
"That's not fair.
That's not—"
"You told me to call a cab, Rowan.
While I was in labor.
While your son was coming."
"Mom needed me there.
It was her sixtieth—"
"I needed you here." I kept my voice level.
"Leo needed you here.
And you chose the cake."
He ran a hand through his hair.
"I didn't know it would happen that fast."
"Your phone worked.
You knew."
He sat back down.
For a moment he looked almost like the man I had married — uncertain, younger, reaching for something to hold onto.
"I'll make it right," he said.
"I'll take time off.
We can—"
"Who called you, Rowan?"
The shift was instant.
His face closed.
"I told you.
Work."
"Then you won't mind if I see the number."
He stood again.
"I'm not doing this right now.
You just had a baby.
We're both exhausted.
Let's not—"
"Show me the number."
He picked up the gift bag from the floor where it had fallen.
He set it on the foot of the bed without looking at me.
"I'm going to get coffee," he said.
"We'll talk when you're not like this."
He walked out.
I sat with Leo against my chest and listened to his footsteps disappear down the corridor.
Then I picked up my own phone.
I opened the call log I had pulled that morning — not from his phone, but from the shared family account we used for billing.
The account he had forgotten I managed.
The number that had called him was listed three times in the past four days.
I didn't recognize it.
But I recognized the area code.
It was registered to a district forty minutes from our house.
I screenshot it.
May you like
Sent it to my work email.
Then I fed my son and waited.
