Chapter 2: The No-Visitors Rule
I got inside and locked the door. Not the bolt, just the knob. I wanted to hear if anyone tried it.
Nobody did. Through the front window I could see the three of them in the driveway: Linda talking with her hands, Darlene back on my porch swing like she paid the mortgage, and Ben with his hands in the pockets of his quarter-zip, nodding. He nods when he’s scared. He’s done it since the day I met him.
I sat on the edge of the couch and fed Lily, because that’s the thing about newborns. The world can be on fire, and they still need to eat every two hours.
Let me tell you how we got here.
I’m thirty-three. Ben’s thirty-five. We tried for Lily for almost three years, and when I finally got pregnant, I wrote a birth plan so detailed my OB laughed. Ben in the room. Nobody else.
Linda did not love the birth plan.
Linda lives in Phoenix. She’d been a widow for six years, and from the minute we told her I was pregnant, she started talking about “when I’m there.” When I’m there, I’ll teach you to swaddle. When I’m there, you can make me your lasagna, I’ve missed it. When I’m there, we’ll do a photo shoot on the couch, just me and the baby, for my Facebook.
When I’m there for the delivery.
“She won’t be there for the delivery,” I told Ben.
“I’ll tell her,” he said.
He didn’t. So I did, in the family group chat, with my mom and my sister and his mom and his aunt all in it. I kept it short and friendly. We’re asking for two weeks with just the three of us after Lily is born. We’d love visitors after that! Thank you for understanding. ❤️
My mom, Gail, replied in thirty seconds: Of course, sweetheart. I’ll leave food on the porch and run.
Linda gave it a thumbs-up, then called Ben and cried for forty minutes.
At thirty-nine weeks, Lily’s heart rate dropped during a routine monitoring appointment, and dropped again, and suddenly there were six people in the room and someone was saying “category three” into a phone. I remember the cold of the operating room. I remember Ben’s eyes over his paper mask. I remember that she didn’t cry right away, and then she did.
Afterward, in recovery, shaking from the anesthesia, I asked Ben one question.
“Your mom’s not coming. Right?”
“Mom’s not coming,” he said, and kissed my forehead.
On the couch, Lily had fallen asleep with her mouth open. I laid her in the bassinet and reached for the iPad on the side table to text my mom.
It’s a family iPad. We use it for recipes and Netflix, and because Ben set it up years ago, it’s logged into his messages. I never read them. I never had a reason to.
The first thing on the screen was a conversation with “Mom 💛,” and the newest message, from five minutes ago, said: She locked the door?? Fix this.
I scrolled up.
I didn’t mean to. That’s not true. I meant to.
Three weeks ago. A screenshot of a flight confirmation. Phoenix to Columbus. Two passengers. One-way.
Below it, from Linda: Flight’s booked. Don’t tell her till we land. She’ll come around once she’s holding the baby with me there.
And below that, from my husband, the man who’d kissed my forehead in recovery and told me his mother wasn’t coming:
ok
Two letters. No capital. Not even a period.
I read it four times. Then I kept scrolling. Linda asking which bedroom was on the first floor. Ben: ours, but she’ll be fine upstairs for a bit. Linda: Perfect. Darlene’s coming too, her back is bad. Ben: ok.
Outside, I heard my mother-in-law laugh.
I looked at the flight confirmation one more time. One-way.
Then, behind me, the doorknob turned.
