“I don’t know,” I said.
For the second time that night, the truth sounded unbearable.
Maya answered the question herself after they moved us into a private room.
“No one locked me in,” she said.
She lay propped against white pillows, an IV line in her arm. Some color had returned to her face, though she still looked painfully small beneath the hospital blanket.
“I could have called someone,” she continued. “I could have called an ambulance.”
“Why didn’t you?”
Her eyes shifted toward the bassinet beside my chair.
“Because your mother said if I embarrassed the family, she would tell you I wasn’t capable of taking care of Liam.”
I stared at her.
“She said what?”
Maya’s voice grew quieter.
“She said you were already under pressure at work, and that if I called you home, you might lose the German contract. She told me you had warned her I could be emotional after the surgery.”
“I never said that.”
“I know that now.”
“Maya, I never said anything remotely like that.”
“I know.”
The pain in her voice stopped me. I sat beside the bed and took her hand.
Her wedding ring hung loosely around her finger.
“I should have told you,” she said. “But every time I tried, she was nearby. Or Chloe was. They kept saying you had enough to worry about.”
“Why did you believe them?”
Maya looked at me then, and for the first time since I had found her, I saw something sharper than fear in her eyes.
“Because you always believed them first.”
The words landed without force, but they struck deeper than any accusation shouted in anger.
I opened my mouth.
Nothing came out.
Maya looked away.
“When we chose the apartment, your mother said I pushed you into spending too much. When I wanted Liam’s nursery painted green instead of blue, she said I was controlling. When I asked Chloe not to post pictures from my baby shower before I had shared them myself, Chloe cried, and you asked me to apologize.”
“I was trying to keep the peace.”
“You were keeping their peace.”
Outside the room, a cart rattled down the corridor. A nurse laughed softly at something a colleague said. Life continued at an ordinary pace while my understanding of my marriage quietly rearranged itself.
“I didn’t know it was this bad,” I said.
“No,” Maya replied. “You didn’t.”
She closed her eyes, exhausted.
I wanted to defend myself. I wanted to explain that I had spent years supporting everyone because my father died young and my mother had struggled. I wanted to say that Chloe had always been impulsive and Mark had been between jobs more often than he had been employed. I wanted to say that helping family was not the same as choosing them over my wife.
But as I watched Maya lie in a hospital bed because she had been afraid to call me, every explanation sounded like another excuse.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
Her eyes opened again.
“I don’t need you to be sorry tonight, David. I need to know Liam and I are safe.”
“You are.”
“From them?”
The answer should have been immediate.
It wasn’t.
