Chapter 4 - A Message Marked Urgent

I didn't ask Vincent about the hospital call the next time he telephoned. Not immediately.

He wanted to know whether Grace was feeding well. He asked if she'd slept. He listened when I said she had been unsettled after midnight, and he didn't respond by offering to buy something. For almost three minutes we sounded like two ordinary parents exchanging information about their daughter.

Then he said, "Naomi tells me you requested the call records."

"I asked what happened to the message."

"My office has a lot of layers."

"Someone answered. Someone marked it urgent. Someone forwarded it."

"I know. I've asked my assistant to explain it."

I held the phone against my ear and looked at Grace sleeping in her basket.

"Vincent, did you tell your office not to interrupt you in Paris?"

He paused. "I told them to screen ordinary calls."

"What did you consider ordinary?"

"Anything that wasn't an actual emergency."

"The hospital called about your wife in labor."

"I didn't know what the call was about."

"That's what you could have learned by returning it."

He exhaled. "You're right."

Those two words should have satisfied me. They didn't. Not because I wanted him to suffer, but because he had agreed with me in the past and changed nothing.

After we spoke, I searched through the photographs on my phone for the one I'd taken of my hospital bag before he left. The tiny folded clothes were lined up on the bed, and Vincent's empty travel case appeared in the corner. I hadn't noticed the contrast when I took the picture. I had been thinking about being ready for Grace.

I deleted nothing. I sent Naomi copies of the messages Vincent had written while I was in the hospital, along with the dates they appeared on my phone. I did not send them to punish him. I wanted us to stop treating memory as something one spouse could argue the other out of.

Naomi arranged a meeting with both legal teams for the following week. In the meantime, Vincent could visit for short periods with Margaret present. I agreed because the first visit had been calm and because Grace's schedule allowed it.

During the second visit, he asked to change a diaper. He had brought no expensive gift this time, only a small packet of the wipes I'd mentioned on the telephone. He followed my instructions carefully, his fingers clumsy around the fastenings. When the task was finished, he looked oddly pleased with himself.

"She won't remember this," he said.

"Maybe not. But we will."

Margaret smiled quietly from the kitchen doorway. Her expression reminded me that I wasn't imagining every good thing Vincent did. He could be gentle. I had known that when we married. His tenderness wasn't the problem. It was how easily he set it aside when something else interested him.

After he left, Naomi forwarded a short statement from his executive assistant, Daniel Shaw. Daniel confirmed that the hospital's message had been entered into the office system while Vincent was in Paris. Because the number on file was marked for urgent personal matters, Daniel had sent an alert directly to Vincent's private phone.

He also said Vincent had instructed the office to avoid interrupting his meetings unless there was a crisis requiring immediate action.

I read those lines twice.

I hadn't been a crisis until someone else judged me worth interrupting him for.

Later that evening, Vincent called again. I let him finish telling me about Daniel's statement before asking whether he had checked his phone that day.

"I did," he said. "Not consistently. There were meetings."

"What were they for?"

"Sophia's family had a complicated transaction underway. She asked me to help resolve it."

"Was someone ill?"

"No."

"Was anyone in immediate danger?"

"No."

"Then why did you leave when I could give birth at any moment?"

He said Sophia had been overwhelmed, that the situation involved a commitment he had helped her make, and that he'd believed he could settle everything quickly. He had not expected the discussions to last nearly two weeks.

"Did you try to leave?" I asked.

"I thought about it."

The quiet admission cut through his other explanations.

"Thinking about leaving isn't coming home, Vincent."

He didn't defend himself this time. That made the conversation harder in a different way. I was accustomed to him telling me I was overreacting. Hearing him begin to understand didn't erase the empty space beside my hospital bed.

A little later, Margaret came over with groceries I'd forgotten to order. I told her about Daniel's statement while she unpacked them. She set a carton of milk on the counter and considered her words.

"You know," she said, "I used to think Mr. Moretti never noticed how long you waited for him. Now I think he noticed enough to assume you'd keep doing it."

I sat down. Her sentence was plain, and because Margaret rarely judged anyone, it stayed with me.

"Am I being unfair by asking what happened to the call?"

"No. You're asking him to tell you the truth."

That night, as Grace slept, I received a message from an unfamiliar number. The sender identified herself before I could wonder who it was.

Emily, this is Sophia Bennett. Vincent doesn't know I'm contacting you. I heard about the divorce. There is something about the night the hospital called that you should hear from me, not from his office.

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I read it without moving. I'd spent years asking myself what Sophia wanted from my husband. Now she was asking to speak to me about the only night on which I knew exactly what I had needed from him.

I put Grace safely in her basket and began to write a reply.