I kept Hannah in the office for a few hours. Then I drove her to my sister’s place across town and begged her to watch Hannah until lunch. Then I raced back to Maple Grove and plunged a toilet while my phone buzzed and my head pounded.
By the end of the first week, I’d missed a maintenance meeting, mixed up two work orders, and forgot to sign a vendor invoice. My boss, Vince, pulled me aside in the parking lot.
“David,” he said, rubbing his forehead like I was a migraine. “I’m sorry Lauren’s wherever, but I need you sharp.”
“I’m trying,” I said.
Vince nodded, not unkindly, but firmly. “Try harder. Tenants don’t care about your personal life.”
I wanted to tell him tenants didn’t care about Hannah’s teething either, but I just nodded and swallowed it because pride doesn’t pay the rent.
That night, Hannah ran a fever. It wasn’t a panic-level fever, but it was high enough that I took her to urgent care on Coldwater Road. The waiting room smelled of disinfectant and stale coffee. A couple of old men coughed into their sleeves, and a little boy watched cartoons at full volume on a phone.
When the nurse called Hannah’s name, I stood up so fast my knees creaked like an old staircase. I held my daughter while the doctor checked her ears and throat.
“Likely teething,” the doctor said. “Keep her hydrated, alternate infant Tylenol if needed. You’re doing fine, Dad.”
Fine. I walked out with Hannah asleep on my chest and almost cried in the parking lot because one person—one stranger—had said I was doing fine.
I texted Lauren: Hannah had a fever. Urgent care. Teething.
Lauren didn’t respond for six hours. When she finally did, it was a selfie in front of a stone fountain, her cheeks flushed, a scarf artfully draped around her neck, the city lights twinkling behind her. The caption read: Paris is magic.
Then, a separate text: She okay?
Two words about our child. Three sentences about herself.
That’s when the anger started to change shape. It stopped being hot and reactive; it became focused, like a tool in my hand. I started noticing things.
On Friday, I opened the bank app to check if my paycheck had hit. The number in our joint account looked wrong—lower than it should have been. I clicked on “Transactions,” and my thumb went still.
$486.20 – Restaurant. Paris.
$1,139.00 – Hotel Deposit. Rome.
$320.00 – ATM Withdrawal (Converted).
Then another one. And another.
I stared at those numbers like they were written in a foreign language. We weren’t wealthy. We weren’t broke, but we were the kind of family where I waited for coupons and complained about the price of eggs. We were the kind of couple who argued about a seventy-dollar dinner date. Now she was dropping nearly five hundred dollars on one meal while I was buying store-brand wipes.
My chest tightened. I told myself not to be petty. I told myself a month meant some spending. I told myself she deserved something nice.
Then I looked at my own receipts.
$18.34 – Infant Tylenol, Thermometer, Pedialyte.
$42.91 – Diapers, Wipes, Formula.
$9.67 – Gas Station Coffee and a breakfast sandwich I barely tasted.
I wasn’t jealous of Paris. I was furious at the imbalance—at the way she had picked up the fun part of life and handed me the unpaid labor like it was my solemn duty.
At 2:50 AM that night, Hannah woke up screaming again—full-body, red-faced, angry. I checked her; she was clean. I warmed a bottle; she refused it. I rocked her until my arms trembled. Then I realized we were out of infant Motrin. I stared at the empty bottle on the counter like it was a personal insult.
So, I buckled Hannah into the car seat, threw a blanket over her, and drove to Walmart in the dark with the heater blasting and my eyes burning.
The Walmart parking lot was a sea of harsh lights and tired people. A truck idled near the cart return, and somewhere a shopping cart rattled over a crack in the pavement. Inside, the air was bright and cold, smelling of floor cleaner and cheap perfume. I pushed the cart one-handed while Hannah fussed, her cries echoing off the high industrial ceiling.
In the baby aisle, I stood there blinking at rows of medicine like I’d forgotten how to read. A woman in her sixties with gray hair and a puffy winter coat walked by, glanced at Hannah, and slowed down.
“Rough night?” she asked softly.
“You could say that,” I muttered.
She leaned in, looking at Hannah with that familiar older-woman face—the kind that has seen everything and still cares anyway.
“You’re doing good,” she said, like she was telling me something vital. “Babies don’t remember who went on vacation. They remember who showed up.”
My throat tightened again. “Thanks,” I managed to choke out.
She nodded once and walked away with a carton of eggs and a loaf of bread, like she’d done her small piece of work for the world. Back in the car, Hannah finally fell asleep with her mouth open, a tear dried on her cheek. I sat in the Walmart parking lot for a minute with the engine running, just listening to her breathe.
My phone buzzed. Lauren had posted a photo: Eiffel Tower in the background, wine glass raised. Her caption popped up through a friend’s share: Self-care is not selfish.
I stared at it until the screen went dim. Then I opened my Notes app and typed a date. A time. A fact. Not because I wanted war, but because I could feel something coming, and for the first time, I wasn’t going to be caught empty-handed.
A few days later, Lauren sent a group shot from a cafe. Her friends were grinning, plates of pastries in front of them, steam rising from cappuccinos. I didn’t even mean to zoom in, but my finger did it anyway, like my body already knew what my mind didn’t want to see.
In the window behind them, there was a reflection. A blurred shape, maybe a waiter, maybe just a shadow falling across the glass. For a second, my mind raced to the worst possible places. Was there someone else? Was this whole trip a lie?
Then I stopped. It didn’t matter. It could have been a ghost for all I cared. The betrayal wasn’t about who she might be with; it was about the woman in the foreground ignoring the life she’d left behind.
My stomach dropped anyway.
I didn’t text her about it. I didn’t accuse. I didn’t feed that part of the story because I already had enough on my plate. I went back to the bank app and took screenshots. I went to Hannah’s doctor appointments and kept the paperwork. I kept every receipt, every timestamp, every unanswered message.
By the end of week two, my notes weren’t notes anymore. They were a record. And as I rocked Hannah to sleep that night, her warm little body heavy against my chest, I whispered the truth I’d been avoiding.
“Your mom wanted freedom,” I murmured into her hair. “So I’m going to make sure you’re the one who’s protected.”
The next morning, I woke up with Hannah’s tiny hand wrapped around my finger like a set of handcuffs. Not the bad kind. The kind that says you don’t get to drift. You don’t get to “find yourself.” You either show up, or you don’t.
Hannah babbled at the ceiling fan while I changed her diaper on the living room floor. My back ached, my eyes felt gritty, and the coffee I poured tasted like nothing because exhaustion has a way of stealing the flavor out of life. I drove her to my sister’s place, kissed her forehead, and went to work with a knot in my stomach that didn’t loosen all day.
I kept thinking about those numbers in the bank account. $486.20. $1,139. $328. And worse than the numbers was the silence between them—the gaps where my texts sat there unread while my wife posed in front of history like she didn’t have a child who still woke up crying for comfort.
By lunch, I’d fixed a clogged garbage disposal, swapped out a busted thermostat, and talked a tenant down from calling the police because her neighbor’s dog barked too much. Normal problems. Problems I could solve with a wrench and a calm voice. My own problem didn’t come with a manual.
Ron Keller found me in the maintenance shop, staring at my phone like it was going to start talking back. He leaned on the workbench, took one look at my face, and nodded toward the coffee pot.
“You look like hell.”
“Feel like it too,” I said.
Ron poured himself a cup, black as tar. He didn’t ask how Europe was going. He didn’t ask if Lauren missed Hannah. He’d been alive too long to ask questions with obvious answers. He just said, “You eating?”
I shrugged. “Whatever I can grab.”
He watched me for a beat, then asked, “She call much?”
“No,” I said, and the word came out sharper than I meant it to. I rubbed my eyes. “I mean, she FaceTime’d twice. Mostly she talks about the buildings.”
