Chapter 8: The Weight Amy Carried
That evening I came home to find Amy sitting on the floor of Frederick's room.
He was asleep in his crib, finally breathing easily, his color back to normal.
She was leaning against the wall beside it with her knees pulled up and her eyes closed.
She wasn't asleep.
She opened them when she heard me in the doorway.
"How did it go?" she asked.
"Grace thinks the DA will move forward.
The evidence is strong." I sat down on the floor across from her, my back against the opposite wall.
"Teresa called me today.
I recorded it."
"What did she say?"
"That you planned everything.
That you timed the call.
That you wanted me to walk in and see exactly what I saw."
Amy looked at me for a long moment.
"Do you believe that?"
"No."
She let out a slow breath.
"She's been saying things like that to me for two years," Amy said.
"Not directly.
She'd say things like, 'Connor works so hard, it would be a shame if he thought you weren't managing.' Or, 'I hope you're not making things harder for him than they need to be.' Little things.
Every week." She paused.
"I started to believe some of it.
I started to think I was the problem."
"You weren't the problem."
"I know that now.
But when you're alone with a baby and you're exhausted and the person who's supposed to be helping you keeps telling you that you're failing—" She stopped.
"I stopped trusting my own judgment, Connor.
That's what she did.
She made me doubt myself so completely that I couldn't even tell you what was happening in our own house."
Frederick made a small sound in his sleep.
They both looked at him.
"The day of the party," Amy said quietly, "she arrived at seven in the morning.
I hadn't slept.
Frederick had been up most of the night.
She walked in and said, 'Go shower.
I'll take him.' And I was so grateful I almost cried." Her voice was very steady.
"By nine o'clock, the relatives were arriving.
By ten, she had handed Frederick back to me and told me the kitchen needed to be set up.
She said the family was coming to celebrate and I needed to contribute."
"She handed him back."
"And every time I tried to put him down so I could work, he cried.
So I just — I held him and I worked.
And nobody came into the kitchen to check on me.
Not once."
"Betsy knew something was wrong."
"Betsy brought me a glass of water around noon.
She looked at me and she looked at Frederick and she said, 'This isn't right.' But she didn't do anything.
I think she was afraid of Teresa too."
I thought about Betsy in the driveway, turning her back so Teresa couldn't read her lips.
"She came to me in the end," I said.
"She did." Amy looked down at her hands.
"I tried to call you.
Twice.
Deb took my phone the first time and said the battery was dying and she'd plug it in for me.
She gave it back an hour later.
The second time I used the house phone and she told me you were in a meeting."
"I know."
"I thought about walking out.
Just picking Frederick up and leaving." She looked up.
"But I didn't have the car.
And I didn't have anywhere to go that wasn't your family's house or my parents' house three states away.
And I kept thinking — if I walk out, Teresa will tell Connor I abandoned the party.
She'll make it into something.
So I stayed."
"Amy."
"I stayed because I was trying to protect our marriage from your mother." Her voice finally cracked, just slightly.
"And she was in our house st*aling it."
I moved across the floor and sat beside her.
She didn't lean into me right away.
She sat with her hands in her lap for a moment, and then she turned her face against my shoulder, and I felt her exhale — long and slow and exhausted — like she had been holding that breath for two years.
Frederick slept.
The room was quiet.
"I'm sorry," I said.
"I should have seen it."
"You trusted your mother."
"I should have trusted you more."
She didn't argue with that.
She just stayed where she was, and after a while her breathing evened out, and I sat there on the floor of our son's room and thought about all the ways a person can be slowly convinced that what they're seeing isn't real.
Teresa had done that to Amy.
And I had let her have enough access to do it.
That was the part I was going to have to live with.
But not tonight.
Tonight, Frederick was breathing easily, and Amy was finally still, and the folder with the forged deed was in Grace Holloway's office.
May you like
Tomorrow, we would keep fighting.
Tonight, we were just here.
