Chapter 6: The Quiet Week
The first quiet week felt louder than the party.
Without Teresa’s voice assigning chores, the house revealed its ordinary sounds—the refrigerator’s hum, Frederick’s rattle against the crib rail, Amy’s footsteps when she was allowed to walk anywhere without permission. I took three days off the job site and learned the exact temperature of the bottle warmer. Amy slept in fragments. I watched the porch camera more than I admitted.
Rachel’s updates arrived like weather reports. Mason’s attorney wanted a deal. Teresa’s attorney wanted a narrative. Ruiz wanted timelines that matched bank pulls to liquor-store cameras. I sent screenshots until my thumb ached. Amy added dates from a notes app she had kept secretly—days Frederick’s fever started, days the mail key went missing, days she was told not to “bother Connor at work.” The app was a diary of survival. Rachel called it a gift to the case.
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Relatives tested the boundary. An uncle texted that blood should soften under pressure. I replied once: Pressure was my wife at a sink with a sick baby. Don’t call. Then I blocked the thread. Amy’s mother drove in from Knoxville with casserole and no advice, which made her a saint in my new religion. She washed a bottle and said, “You both look like you’ve been in a war.” We had. The war’s battlefield had been our kitchen.
Frederick’s follow-up declared the infection clearing. Amy cried in the parking lot from relief that had nowhere else to go. I held her and the carrier and let the cake-pendant birthday redo wait until the tears finished. Celebration, I was learning, required safety first.
