“What the hell were you thinking?” George shouted at her as she opened the front door. His voice cut through the dimly lit foyer, abrasive and angry. She closed the door behind her and wiped her snowy boots on the mat.
“How’s Will?” she said calmly, removing her boots. “Margery said he got sick.”
“What kind of a mother are you?” George approached her now, but he still hadn’t turned on the lights. She saw him as a shadow, large, hulking. Looming. “You have one job, to take care of this kid and you can’t even do that.”
Tears pricked in her eyes, and she bit her lip to keep them at bay. It wasn’t so much that George sounded mean. It was that his words rang so very true. What kind of a mother was she? She’d left Will for days to go be an adulterer. Of course, George didn’t know that. At least, she didn’t think he did.
“Where is he?” she asked. She went to move past George, back toward Will’s room, but he grabbed her arms, held on tight enough that it hurt. She struggled to break free, but he held on to her tighter.
“There weren’t any writing conferences in the city this week. I checked.” George spoke more softly now, the words vibrating across her hair, into her ear. She felt them almost more than she heard them. And a shiver rippled through her. “Where the fuck were you?”
“I told you,” she said. “It was small. A tiny group that branched off from Seattle.” God, the lie popped out so easily. It didn’t even feel like a lie.
He gripped her arms tighter and shook her a little, like that alone would set the truth free. “I don’t believe you,” he said.
She pinched her lips together for a moment. Then she said, “Let go of me. I need to see my son.”
But he held on for another moment, before he finally released her with a shove hard enough that she stumbled, tripped over her boots and fell back against the door with a thud.
The noise was enough to startle Will and he let out a bloodcurdling scream. She got her footing and pushed past George. If he shoved her again, well, then she would shove right back. She wasn’t a little girl anymore. She didn’t take this kind of crap from a man just because he was bigger than her. George was supposed to be her husband, not her father.
She ran into Will’s room. He sat in his crib in only his underwear and sucked his thumb, and even from the small slant of light from the hallway she could tell he was sweaty, listless, his curls matted and tangled. She heard George walking behind her, but she went to Will and lifted him up. His skin was so hot. She put her hand on his forehead, and he felt like fire.
“He’s burning up,” she turned and said to George. “Did you give him anything? Did you take him to the doctor?” George shook his head. And she didn’t know if that meant he had done neither one. “Not even Tylenol?”
She remembered something she’d read in one of the baby books that if a baby’s temperature reached over 105 degrees it could cause brain damage. That’s why you gave them a fever reducer, so it didn’t get that high. And if it didn’t come down you were supposed to go to the emergency room.
“I didn’t know what to do,” George said meekly now.
“You’re his father.” She spat his own words right back at him. “Where the fuck were you?”
After she bathed Will in a lukewarm bath, and then wrapped him loosely in a towel, he put his thumb in his mouth and leaned his head against her chest. She sat in the wooden rocker in his room and rocked slowly back and forth and back and forth, and finally she felt his breathing slow against her. He fell asleep. The room was quiet and still again, and she exhaled, closed her eyes too and kept slowly rocking.
It had only been hours since Max had kissed her goodbye in the hotel lobby and yet it felt like it had been weeks. Months. The three days she had spent with him were a different life, a different world, a fantasy. This was her real life. Tears burned her eyes and spilled down her cheeks, and she didn’t even have a free hand to wipe them away.
She heard George’s footsteps approaching the room, and she shifted her shoulder to wipe her face on her sleeve, trying not to wake Will. Not wanting George to see her crying more than she wanted Will to sleep. She dried her cheeks, and then kissed the top of his head. He moaned a little, shifted, then sucked harder on his thumb.
“You’re right, I’m his father. He’s my son,” George spoke softly, urgently from the doorway now. His words were so calm, they chilled her a little, and she wrapped her arms tighter around Will. “I don’t know what you’re up to, but if you ever try and take him from me, I swear to god, I’ll kill you.”