Finally at home, Brynn fed Lucas and put him down for his first real nap of the day in his bassinet. It was almost five o’clock. She felt horrible that she’d been so neglectful of him all day, taking him with her wherever she had to go, especially after he’d gotten shots at the doctor’s appointment. Usually, her actions and movements revolved around Lucas and his needs. Today, she had forced him to work around what she needed to do and where she needed to be. He fell asleep almost immediately when she put him down. According to the sleep coach’s schedule that Brynn still feebly clung to, this would be his last nap of the day, and she’d try (as she always did) to get him to sleep through the night after that.
Once he was down, Brynn began searching. She rummaged through all of Ross’s drawers, every single jacket and pants pocket, even inside his shoes. She ransacked the bathrooms, the musty basement, even the barn with the lawn mower and fertilizer and rakes hanging on the walls.
She was about to give up when she realized that Ross’s iPad was here, and it was linked to his phone. She knew his password—and he knew hers. They always had trusted each other that way. And until now, she’d never once felt the need or want to look through his phone.
She pounded his code into the screen and anxiously waited as it opened. She looked. But after a few minutes, it became clear that she wasn’t going to find anything. There was nothing. Not only that, but she found nothing to indicate that Ross had done anything wrong. There were no cryptic text messages, no suspicious photographs, no criminal emails hiding in the deleted folder. Ross’s entire footprint was clean—almost too clean—and Brynn was as lost as ever.
She felt a wave of rage fill her body. She hadn’t let herself be angry at Ross yet, not about this, but she suddenly was consumed with vitriol toward him. Even if Ross was innocent of what he’d been accused of, he admitted to her that he’d been hiding something from her—something big—about his father and their business. He had been lying to her. Whatever was going on, he’d kept her in the dark. While she had been suffering, caring for their child, drowning in her sadness, he had been keeping something out of her sight, assuming that she’d never find out.
She threw his iPad onto the floor. “Fuck you!” she yelled. “You fucking asshole!”
Part of her wished that she had found something incriminating against Ross: evidence of an affair with Cecelia, a blood-encrusted shoe, a suspicious credit-card charge, anything. As awful as the thought might be, Brynn felt that it would be easier in some ways if she discovered that Ross was guilty. Then there would be no conflict, nothing to debate or figure out, no mystery. She could move on.
She had started to cry—again—when her phone rang. She frantically answered it without even looking at who was calling.
“Honey.” Brynn heard the voice of her mother. “What is going on? I heard on the news about the girl and then someone from the library told me they had a suspect, but I didn’t think anything of it. Then when your dad got home from work, the contractor on his job had heard through the grapevine about Ross. Everyone’s talking about it. What happened?”
“I don’t know, Mom,” Brynn said. “Everything happened so fast. It’s been a really … confusing day.” As Brynn spoke, she couldn’t believe how much her entire world had changed since just that morning.
“Well, do you want me to come over there and stay with you? I don’t think you should be alone right now.”
“No,” Brynn said, without hesitation. “This is all going to be cleared up quickly, I think. It’s a big mistake.” She could hear how she sounded—as if she were either lying or just dumb—but right now it was the easiest thing to do. “I’ll be okay. Ross didn’t do this, Mom.”
“Well, he hasn’t exactly been there for you,” her mom reminded her. “I mean, maybe he had a whole other life you didn’t know about.”
“Mom, just because he hasn’t been helping a lot with Lucas doesn’t mean he’s a murderer. Think about what you just said.” To her parents, Brynn had been defending Ross for years, and she was tired of having to justify her relationship.
“I’m just saying, Ross was selfish.”
“What do you mean was selfish, Mom? He’s not dead!”
“No, an innocent young girl is dead. Such a terrible thing.”
“I have to go,” Brynn said. “I’ll keep you posted, okay?”
“Honey,” her mom said, her voice softening, “I’m sorry. I never say the right thing. But we’re here to help. Your dad and me. If you need anything.”
That’s rich, Brynn thought, coming from her mom, who had hardly ever helped her with anything when she was a kid and certainly hadn’t helped her as an adult. Everything had to be politicized with her mother, everything had to have a bigger point, nothing could ever just be as simple as Brynn wanting something because she was a human being with needs and desires.
She hung up, her anger reaching what felt like a boiling point. She needed to shower and wash her hair. She’d worked up a sweat searching through the house. With Lucas still asleep, she turned on the shower and jumped in.
Brynn regretted the occasional times she’d vented to her mother about Ross. But it was easy to complain to her mother about Ross or any of the Nelsons. Her mother had never liked the family, ever since Brynn started hanging out with Sawyer in Menemsha when they were teenagers.
“They represent the worst of the island,” she had told Brynn back then. “In fact, they’re even worse than the summer people. At least the summer people aren’t pretending to be something they’re not. But the Nelsons … it’s like they’re ashamed to be from the island. They’re ashamed to live here year-round. They think they’re better than us.”
Brynn had wanted to snap back at her and remind her that seasonal people on this island, as annoying as they might be with their Range Rovers with Connecticut plates and their impatience and their entitlement, were what made up the island’s entire economy. They might not live on the island in the winter, but they still paid taxes that built the schools and paved the roads. They donated to the hospital, to the Island Housing Trust, to Camp Jabberwocky, to Family Planning—just like locals did. They helped make the island run, whether Brynn’s mom wanted to admit it or not. Even before she was eighteen, Brynn had enough perspective to understand that that was how the island worked. As a year-rounder, she knew that you could dislike the summer folks all you wanted, but you couldn’t hate them, and you couldn’t survive without them. It didn’t work that way. The Nelsons weren’t summer people anyway, she had wanted to shout. Just because they didn’t rely on a woodstove all winter for heat or refuse to drive down-island because of traffic and gas prices didn’t mean they weren’t islanders. They were locals as much as Brynn’s family was. Just a different kind.
Brynn was so tired that she almost fell asleep standing up in the shower. She blinked to stay awake.
It wouldn’t be the first time she’d accidentally fallen asleep when she was alone with Lucas.
Just last week, she’d put Lucas down for a nap around noon and decided to sunbathe a little on the deck while he slept. She’d shut her eyes. The sun had felt so good on her skin, as if it were making her new again. She knew that there were so many other things she needed to do while Lucas napped: appointments to schedule and confirm, packages to unwrap and boxes to break down, dinner to prep. But she was just so tired. She couldn’t peel herself up from her towel.
She fell asleep quickly, unknowingly. She’d only meant to shut her eyes for a few minutes and let the sun warm her face. But she was awakened by Ross screaming. “Brynn! Brynn!”
She opened her eyes and was instantly consumed with dread, and then fear. She was more frightened than she’d ever felt in her entire life. She’d fallen completely, deeply asleep, while alone with Lucas. She’d abandoned him.
“What happened, Brynn?” Ross asked.
They could both hear Lucas crying. Brynn sprang up and pushed past Ross. She glanced at her phone. She’d slept for three hours.
“Oh my God,” she said. “I—I fell asleep.” Her face stung and her throat was dry. Her hips ached.
“I can see that,” Ross said, as he followed Brynn upstairs to Lucas. “The monitor says he woke up almost an hour ago. How did you not hear him?”
Brynn didn’t respond. Lucas was writhing in his swaddle like a worm, screaming for help, hungry, wet, and now exhausted from his fruitless cries for help. She felt like the worst mother in the world. Worsened by the fact that Ross had caught her, and she had no excuse.
“What if I hadn’t come home just now?” Ross asked her. Brynn still didn’t answer. She was obviously sorry. What did he want her to say? She felt incapable of speaking, even if she had a sufficient response to give.
She changed Lucas’s diaper. He had soaked through the swaddle. Now she’d have to wash and dry it before putting him down for the night. It was the only swaddle he liked, the only one that didn’t make him wail when she put it on him. She’d ordered another one online, but it hadn’t arrived yet (she reminded herself to look up the tracking; maybe it was lost at the post office). Her mind instantly spiraled with all that she had to do now, calculating the domino effect of her mistake: the laundry, the lost time, the fact that she herself had to pee but she would just have to put it on hold for now while she took care of Lucas. And where was the extra bassinet mattress pad? She knew she had one somewhere.
“Brynn?” Ross asked again. “What happened?”
She couldn’t bring herself to look at him, though she could feel his eyes on her. He’d followed her into the room and watched as she had picked Lucas up and changed him. She sat down to nurse. Lucas started crying again.
“I don’t know…I’m sorry,” she’d finally said, too tired to say more. That was all there was to say, anyway. Ross wouldn’t understand her if she told him that she hadn’t meant to fall asleep but that she was so deeply tired that every cell of her body had made her slip into a dream state. She hadn’t been able to control it. He should try taking care of Lucas all day, every day, she thought to herself as Lucas finally latched on. She shut her eyes. He has no idea how fucking hard this is. He’ll never know.
“Was your monitor even on?” Ross asked. “How could you not have heard him? If you’re so tired, why wouldn’t you just nap right next to him instead of all the way out here?”
Brynn had a sudden, consuming desire to punch Ross in the face, or to kick him in the groin. Maybe both. If she hadn’t been sitting with a baby attached to her breast, and if she hadn’t been so utterly tired, she just might have done it.
Ross simply didn’t understand what was required of Brynn in taking care of Lucas every day, all day. Since Lucas had been born, Ross had only spent a total of two hours alone with him, when Lucas was six weeks old and Brynn had to see her doctor to get the knot of her stitches cut off after it didn’t dissolve right on its own. And even then, Brynn had prepared everything for him to make it as easy as possible. All he’d had to do then was hang, as he liked to call it.
“If you were so worried about Lucas,” Brynn said, “why didn’t you go to him? Why did you waste a minute berating me?” Her voice started to shake, and she could feel tears coming on. “Think about that, Ross. You literally had to wake me up just so I could go get your son, because … what? You can’t do it yourself? Because you’re afraid to step up and be a father? Well, Ross, you are a father. It’s what we always talked about. It’s what you always wanted. It’s happened. And you’re not even here. I need you here.”
She practically spat the words out. She had so much more to say, but she was too tired, and too clouded by her anger and hurt. She knew better than to keep going. Not now. She waited, expecting Ross to apologize. How could he not? She’d finally told him how she really felt. She’d told him what he’d always wanted to hear: that she needed him.
“I literally just walked through the door and could hear him screaming,” Ross said, annoyed. “I saw you outside and wasn’t sure you were even okay. There wasn’t time for me to do anything else.”
“Well, I’m not okay. I’m not okay at all, Ross. And I think you know that. You’ve known that, but you can’t handle it.”
Brynn hadn’t wanted to have this conversation. She hadn’t planned to, but now they were in it, and she’d said it, and there was no going back. The truth was, Ross wasn’t wrong for berating her. What if she’d kept sleeping and Lucas had rolled over and suffocated? What if he’d choked on his saliva from crying? What if, what if, what if? Brynn had turned the volume of the monitor all the way up, and yet she hadn’t heard a thing. She’d shut him out.
Annie had once said to Brynn that she hardly even used a baby monitor at all because she just had a sense of when the twins were awake.
“You’ll just know if Lucas is up. You’ll hear him cry no matter what. You’ll feel it,” she’d said. “There have been serial killers and kidnappers who use recordings of babies crying and play them outside women’s doors to lure them out. It’s like, our natural instinct to help, when we hear a baby cry.”
Brynn kept waiting for that natural instinct to kick in. She wanted to feel that primal urge to protect and comfort her child when he cried. Sometimes, she convinced herself she felt it. She tried to trick herself into believing that it was working, that she had the right reaction, that she was naturally maternal. But even she couldn’t convince herself of something that just wasn’t real.
When Lucas cried, Brynn definitely felt something, but it wasn’t anything good. It was fear. It was panic. She could feel her skin breaking out into hives, her heart rate quickening. She hated his cries, not because her heart ached for him or because his pain was her pain, but because his cries trapped her. His cries held her responsible for fixing something she knew nothing about, something she wasn’t equipped to fix. His cries told her she wasn’t doing it right. His cries told her that she was a bad mom.
Sometimes, Brynn put the monitor on mute when Lucas napped. Just for a few seconds. It was like a high, to go from the constant static of the noise machine, and his piercing cries, to the fluffy silence of being alone, in another room. Those few seconds of silence were heavenly. She could imagine she was somewhere else. But even with the monitor on, full blast, she had developed a way to tune it all out, to leave her life—if only for a few seconds. What kind of mother was capable of that? she wondered. What kind of a mother wanted to ignore her own son?
“I’m not okay,” she said again, crying. Lucas wasn’t latching right on the other breast. She felt lopsided and achy. She stood up. Lucas was still hungry, but the nursing wasn’t working.
Ross stood up, too.
“I’m going to go make a bottle,” he had said. “I’ll be right back, and I’ll take over. It’s okay.”
When Ross had emerged with a bottle, she handed Lucas over to him like he was something she had stolen. Ross embraced him and sat on the edge of the bed. Lucas began drinking immediately from the bottle, and she could see his little body relax, comforted by being in the arms of someone who wanted to hold him, someone who knew how to hold him.
“I’m going to pump.” Brynn had wanted to keep talking to Ross, to tell him more about how she felt. But her breasts ached, and she needed to pump, or she’d get mastitis. She’d learned that a few weeks ago the hard way. And she had to wash the swaddle. She couldn’t do all of these things while also talking to Ross. She could only handle so much. The moment was gone.
“Okay,” Ross had said. “We’ll be right here. I’ve got it under control.”
She’d taken Lucas’s sleep sack and bassinet sheet with her and thrown them in the wash. Ross did have it under control, she knew, but only because she’d set it all up for him. All he had to do was sit there and feed him with the milk she created. Ross didn’t have to think about anything else.
That night, Ross had given Lucas a bath and put him down to bed. He made Brynn pasta—with butter and parmesan cheese, her favorite comfort meal. After dinner, he put his arms around her and held her. At first, Brynn resisted. She didn’t want to be touched. She was touched all day long by Lucas and she felt suffocated. But then, she gave in and she hugged him back. He had shaved his face that morning, and his skin was soft and smelled like Irish soap. His embrace was strong and warm, his arms wrapped around her like a cocoon. When he held her, she was able to remember what it was like when it was just the two of them. She breathed him in and allowed her body to relax, to melt a little bit. They pulled back slowly and looked at each other. For a moment, Ross was still Ross to her. And she was still Brynn. They were still the perfect couple.
But that moment felt like a lifetime ago, now. There had been a slight shift in Ross’s effort and behavior after that, but then it returned to how it was—distant, aloof, robotic—after a few days. It made her start to wonder if that was their new normal. If it was, she wasn’t sure she could live that way. But she also wasn’t sure if she deserved better.
Now, out of the shower, Brynn dressed herself in sweatpants and an old Amherst sweatshirt. She picked up the iPad that she’d thrown on the floor. Luckily, it was intact. She was about to put it back on his bedside table when she realized there was something she hadn’t checked.
She opened it up again and searched for his WhatsApp. They had both downloaded the app during a trip to Mexico for a friend’s wedding. Neither of them had used it since, at least Brynn hadn’t. There were only a few open texts in the app, and most of them were old—from the wedding weekend a few years ago.
But there was one more recent message that Brynn noticed right away, and when she saw who it was from, her stomach dropped.
Ginny.