I withheld the conversation with Blake. What he’d asked me to do made me sick and nervous. I felt a heavy, dense pressure in my gut, and I tried to distract myself by turning it into something else.

“I need to eat,” I said.

And I did suddenly feel achingly hungry. I opened the refrigerator and found a cold piece of grilled chicken. I took a couple of bites, not even bothering with a plate, and washed it down with a glass of water from the tap. It was cold and hurt my teeth.

I stared out the window above the sink at the backyard even though it was dark. I’d been fantasizing ever since we’d found out we were pregnant about installing a swing set and someday being able to push Henry on a swing out there. We’d contracted with a local company to add a patio and landscaping first to make the yard, which had been badly overgrown when we moved in, the kind of place we could really spend time. We could think about the swing set in a few years. . . .

That was why I had almost no extra money to just hand over to Dawn.

I turned back around, wiping the corner of my mouth with my fingers.

“Hey,” I said, “it looked like the car was moved. Was there a doctor’s appointment today? I tried to call you earlier.”

“Oh, that.” She put the mug back down. “I ran to the store for a little bit.”

“The bane of your existence, going to the grocery store. Did you take Henry?”

“No, Mom came over. She stayed with him while I went. It was no big deal.”

“I just wish you could go out and do something more exciting than a trip to the store.”

“I am. Next weekend. Or have you forgotten already?”

“Is that next weekend already?” Since Henry’s birth, time moved with the speed of a rocket. But I knew what she was referring to. “Your trip to Nashville with Holly and Kate? My weekend as a single dad?”

“I think you can handle it. You change diapers better than I do. That’s why I was so quickly able to get over you not being here for bedtime. Yes, you missed the ceremonial changing of the dirty diaper, and I had to do it myself. But next weekend”—she rubbed her hands together—“it’s all yours. Every dirty diaper.”

“That sounds like revenge.”

“No. It sounds like a mom who needs to get away. I’m sure I’ll bawl when I leave him though. Didn’t we both cry when we went away to Lexington in January and left him with my parents?”

“You cried.”

“Okay, tough guy. I didn’t see you wiping your eyes. Right. Anyway, I think he definitely has some teeth coming in on the bottom. He could be getting real cranky real soon.”