Chapter 1: Two Suitcases
The suitcases were the first thing I saw. Two of them, hard-shell, the color of Pepto-Bismol, standing on my front porch like they’d been delivered.
Then I saw my mother-in-law.
Linda Dawson was sitting on our porch swing with her pink sunglasses pushed up into her hair, waving at the car like we’d pulled up to a surprise party. Next to her sat her sister, Darlene, in a purple velour tracksuit, eating trail mix out of the bag.
“Ben,” I said.
My husband had both hands on the wheel. He didn’t take them off. The engine was still running.
“Ben. Why is your mother on our porch?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I swear, Claire, I don’t—”
In the back seat, Lily made the small creaky sound she makes before she cries. She was four days old. I was four days out of an emergency C-section, with fourteen staples holding my stomach closed and a hospital pad that had needed changing since the last exit. The nurse who discharged me that morning had said three things. No lifting anything heavier than the baby. No stairs if you can help it. Rest.
We’d told everyone. Both sides. Two weeks, no visitors. I’d typed it in the family group chat six weeks before my due date, back when I still thought I’d have a normal birth, and I’d added a heart emoji so nobody could call me cold.
Linda had reacted with a thumbs-up.
Now she was coming down the porch steps with her arms open.
“There’s my grandbaby!” she called through the closed window. “Ben, honey, turn off the car, you’re wasting gas.”
I opened my door. Getting out took me almost a minute. You don’t realize how many muscles you use to stand up until somebody has cut through all of them. I held the door frame and breathed through my nose.
“Linda,” I said. “We said two weeks.”
“Oh, I know, I know.” She waved it away like a fly. “That’s for visitors. I’m not a visitor, I’m family. I came to help.”
“Who’s that?”
“Darlene came to help too.” Darlene lifted her trail mix in a salute. “She’s never been to Ohio.”
Ben had gotten out by then. He was unbuckling the car seat, slowly, the way you move when you’re hoping the conversation will be over by the time you finish.
Linda clapped her hands once. “Now. Logistics. Darlene and I will take the downstairs bedroom.”
I actually laughed. It hurt.
“That’s our bedroom.”
“Well, honey, we can’t do stairs. Darlene’s had two back surgeries and my knee’s no good, you know that. You’re young.” She smiled at me with all of her teeth. “Stairs are good for you. Gets the blood moving after surgery.”
“My doctor told me to avoid stairs.”
“Doctors say a lot of things.” Darlene spoke for the first time. She had a smoker’s voice and a lazy way of looking at you, like you were a TV show she’d already seen. “When I had Kevin, they had me up and mopping by day two.”
I looked at the suitcases again. They were too big. Two weeks is a carry-on. Those were the bags you check when you’re not sure when you’re going home.
“How long are you staying?”
“As long as you need me,” Linda said, and patted my arm. Right on the IV bruise.
Ben came around the car with the car seat hooked over his elbow. Lily was crying properly now, that thin newborn wail that goes straight through your skull. Linda’s whole face lit up. She reached for the handle.
“Give her here, I’ll take her inside, you two get the bags—”
“No,” I said.
Everybody stopped.
I took the car seat from Ben. It was the heaviest thing I was allowed to lift, and I felt something pull low in my stomach, something warm and wet that I’d deal with later. I walked past my mother-in-law and up the four porch steps, one at a time, holding the rail.
“Claire,” Linda said behind me. Her voice had changed. “Don’t be dramatic. Ben already said it was fine.”
I had my key in the lock. I turned around.
Ben was standing in the driveway between his mother and his aunt, and he wasn’t looking at me. He was looking at the suitcases.
