I had the phone in one hand and with the other I was submerging the baby in a plastic bathtub, hoping to avoid the use of antipyretics. I was too upset to analyze the tone of his voice or the loud noises in the background. But I can say that, despite my many attempts to get in touch with him, my husband did not call again. Nor did he even send a text to let me know he was alive. His silence went on until six in the morning. In the meantime, I was able to get Lila’s fever down and she had been sound asleep since midnight. I waited, troubled, pacing the apartment until at last I heard the sound of the key in the lock.

“I was so worried about you,” I told him, honestly. “Where have you been?”

Vincent explained that after the hearing, the guys in his office had gone out to celebrate the end of an awful week. According to him, he had planned to stay out for only a half an hour and then go home, but the drinks had managed to dwindle his willpower.

“I didn’t hear you call. There was no signal.”

Once the anxiety that something bad had happened to him subsided, an uncontainable wrath awoke in me, charged with all the frustration that had built up over the months. Without a word I began to break, one after another, the plates and the vase on the table.

“You’re crazy!” he yelled, trying in vain to get me to stop and think. “Stop it!”

His insults and reprimands did nothing but infuriate me more.

The next day Vincent moved into Lila’s room and the baby began sleeping with me every night. It could even be said that in that moment we stopped being husband and wife and became roommates. Vincent didn’t come home until dawn several times in two weeks. One morning he didn’t come home at all, not even to change his clothes. My mood oscillated between resentment and bottomless sadness. I never stopped wondering if we were going to get out from this and, if not, what other options we had. For me, I couldn’t imagine any.