Instead, it was my dad, helping me into the back seat of his old Buick, and my mom, who had spent forty-five minutes in the parking lot reading the car seat instructions out loud.
“We need to stop by the house,” I said, once we were on the road. “My clothes. Evelyn’s things. The breast pump. Everything’s there.”
My dad glanced at me in the rearview mirror.
“You sure you want to do that today, sweetheart?”
“I need my things, Dad.”
What I didn’t say was this: some small, stupid part of me thought that if Ben saw her, if he actually looked at her for more than two seconds, he would snap out of whatever this was. He would see her little face and remember the heartbeat and the yellow room and the notebook full of doctor’s notes, and he would fall on his knees and say he was sorry.
