Part Four: The Letter
I pulled it free with one hand, the baby against my chest with the other arm.
My fingers were numb, or felt that way. I unfolded it.
It was not a long letter.
Daniel,
His name is Benjamin.
You said you would help us. You said I wouldn’t have to do this alone.
I can’t keep begging you to answer me.
He’s your son too.
— Gwen
I read it once.
I read it again.
The bacon was burning. I could smell it from across the kitchen, the specific sharp smell of something that had passed the point of saving. Outside, the garden was the garden it always was. The light was the light it always was.
I sat down on the kitchen floor.
I was already sitting, and then I understood that I was sitting, that I had gone down without feeling the going.
The baby made a sound against me — not the thin broken cry of earlier, but something slightly different, slightly more present, as if the warmth was beginning to register.
“Izzy—” Daniel started.
“Call 911,” I said.
“Listen to me—”
“No.” And the word came out of a place I did not know I had. A place below the disbelief and the fear, a place that was simply certain, in the way that simple things were certain. “Do it.”
He heard it.
I knew he heard it because something changed in his posture — the recalibration stopped, and what was underneath it was visible for a moment. Just a moment.
He called.
