My stomach felt like it would never uncoil.

“What’s the occasion?” Bear asked.

Meghan took a stack of papers from her bag and slapped them on the kitchen island. I tried to turn and duck into the basement, where I’d belonged the whole time, but Bear caught my elbow.

“Stay,” he said.

That’s it. No introduction. No This is my minion, Shannon The one who sleeps with me.

Bear picked up the baby.

“Bee wanted to see you,” Meghan said.

“Oh, really?” Bear said. “Did she tell you that?” He flicked his eyebrows at Meghan, but he nuzzled the baby’s neck and Bee laughed, mouth open, gruff, from her belly. Then he put her back on the floor with her toy, where she was unsatisfied, scooting, fussing, and jamming her fist in her mouth.

Meghan flipped open the stack of long contract papers. They were flagged in places where Bear was supposed to sign.

“You didn’t have to drop these off,” Bear said. “But,” he added, “you wondered what I was up to.”

She looked at me. “I see what you’ve been up to,” she said. I looked away.

“I’ll send them back,” Bear said.

I could see that the baby, Bee, was about to let out a wail, so I did what came naturally to me and scooped her up, my arm under her butt and my hand in her armpit. She pushed her face against my shoulder, rooting.

Meghan watched me with her daughter. “You could sign them now,” she said to Bear. “Maybe he could nurse your daughter.”

I hid my face in Bee’s hair and tried to shush her. She smelled like clean powdery baby.

Bear showed his teeth. Not exactly a smile. “There’s no way I’m signing this without edits,” he said. He put his phone, his wallet, and his keys on top of the contract, claiming it, saving it for later. Then he walked to the front door and pulled it open, stood waiting. A sharp wind had picked up, especially up there, on the hill. Leaves turned in circles across the lawn.

I smoothed Bee’s superfine copper hair.

“He’s cute,” Meghan said to Bear, and took the baby from me. “And too young for you,” she said. “Not that you care.” She took the diaper bag from the table, and the baby wrapped her fist into her mother’s hair. Meghan stared Bear in the eye, then shifted to the side and looked back at me.

“He’s a piece of shit,” she said to me. “There’s no way he’s told you everything.”

“Not in front of Bee,” Bear said. “I’m sure that’s in the contract?”

Meghan shook her head and didn’t look back.

When he was shutting the door behind her, I stole into the basement and stood in a dry corner, where I craned my neck and then smashed my face as hard as I could into the wall without getting a running start.

It lit up all my bones. The hot pain, ringing in my skull. It gave the other pain a place to go. I did it again.