Chapter 4: The Room at the End of the Hall
The penthouse had four bedrooms.
Caleb had used one as a home office for two years and hadn't opened the other two since his last relationship ended.
He opened them both that night.
Olivia stood in the doorway of the larger room and didn't move.
"There are clean towels in the bathroom," Caleb said.
"I'll find formula.
I have — I don't know what I have.
I'll go out."
"You don't have to do that."
"I know I don't have to."
She still didn't move.
She was holding two of the babies, one against each arm, and the third was in a makeshift sling she'd fashioned from her coat.
She had carried all three of them up in the elevator without asking for help, and he had watched her do it and not known how to offer any without making her feel worse.
"Olivia." He stopped.
Started again.
"You have been coming to this apartment for three years.
You know where everything is.
You probably know this place better than I do." He looked at her directly.
"Please just — be here.
That's all I'm asking right now."
Something shifted in her face.
Not relief exactly.
More like a wall that had been holding for a very long time deciding it was allowed to rest.
"Okay," she said quietly.
"Thank you."
He went out for formula and came back with far too much of it.
He also came back with three soft blankets, a bag of groceries, and a baby monitor he'd bought because it seemed like the kind of thing that should exist in an apartment with three infants in it.
He set everything on the kitchen counter and then stood there feeling completely useless.
His father was seated at the kitchen table.
George had not gone home.
He had simply taken off his coat and sat down, and Caleb had not argued.
"She's asleep," George said.
"All four of them."
Caleb sat down across from him.
For a while neither of them spoke.
The apartment was quiet in a way it hadn't been in years — not the empty quiet of a space with only one person in it, but something fuller.
Something that had weight.
"Tell me about Daniel Marsh," Caleb said.
George was quiet for a moment.
Then he told him.
It had been a site collapse in the winter.
A beam had given way.
George had been pinned and Daniel had pulled him out, and in doing so had caught his hand under a secondary fall.
He had lost the index and middle fingers of his right hand and the feeling in his ring finger permanently.
The company's insurance had paid a settlement.
George had paid more, privately, for two years.
Then his own company had hit a difficult period, and the payments had stopped, and he had told himself he would restart them when things stabilized, and then years had passed the way years do, and he had not.
"I told myself I had done enough," George said.
"That's the lie you tell yourself.
That you've done enough."
Caleb looked at the table.
"She cleaned my apartment for three years, Dad.
I gave her a Christmas bonus.
Fifty dollars." He paused.
"I thought that was generous."
George didn't answer.
"What happened to her husband?
The babies' father?"
"She hasn't said.
I didn't ask tonight."
Caleb nodded.
He would not ask tonight either.
He got up and checked the hallway.
The bedroom door was closed.
He stood there for a moment, listening.
Nothing.
Just quiet.
When he came back to the kitchen his phone was lit up on the table.
A message from his property manager, Marcus Webb.
He read it once, then again.
*Heard you brought someone into the building tonight.
Want to make sure you're aware of the guest policy for extended stays.
Happy to discuss.*
Caleb set the phone face-down on the table.
"Problem?" George said.
"Not yet," Caleb said.
But the way Marcus had written it — *happy to discuss* — sat in him wrong.
Marcus Webb had managed the building for six years.
He was efficient and well-dressed and had always made Caleb feel, in a way he'd never examined, that the building ran smoothly because certain kinds of people were kept out of it.
He picked the phone back up and looked at the message again.
May you like
*Happy to discuss.*
He put it in his pocket without replying.
