Chapter 5: Deck Seven
I didn't sleep that night.
Ryan had taken Mason to the cabin after dinner.
Gerald had quietly arranged for a cot to be brought in so Ryan could sleep on one side of the room while Mason and I shared the bed with Emma between us.
Nobody said it out loud.
Gerald just made the call to the front desk and Ryan didn't argue.
That told me something.
Around midnight, when both children were breathing slowly and the ship was rolling gently beneath us, I got up.
I pulled on a cardigan and stepped out onto the narrow balcony.
The ocean was black and enormous.
The stars were very bright.
I heard the balcony door next to ours open.
I didn't move.
A woman's voice, low and careful: "He's not going to do it."
A pause.
Then another voice — female, older — "You knew that coming in."
"I thought this trip would change things."
"Diane." The older voice was patient, tired.
"He has a six-month-old."
"I know how old his daughter is."
"Then you know what that means."
Silence.
The ship moved.
Water against the hull.
"He told me he was going to tell her," Diane said.
"Before the baby.
He kept saying after this, after that.
There was always something."
"There's always something," the other voice said.
"That's how it works."
I stood completely still.
Emma's baby monitor was clipped to my cardigan.
The small green light blinked in the dark.
"I'm not the villain here," Diane said quietly.
The other woman didn't answer that.
I went back inside.
I sat on the edge of the bed and looked at Ryan asleep on the cot.
One arm thrown over his face.
Breathing slow and even, the way he always slept — deeply, without trouble, as if nothing in the world could reach him.
I thought about what Diane had said.
He told me he was going to tell her.
Before the baby.
Before Emma.
Which meant that at some point — while I was pregnant, while I was sick in the mornings, while I was reading baby books and painting the nursery and choosing a name — Ryan had been telling another woman that he was going to leave me.
And then Emma arrived.
And he didn't.
And so instead he invented a bad back.
In the morning, Patricia knocked on our cabin door at seven.
Ryan answered it.
She looked past him at me.
"Get dressed," she said.
"Both of you.
Leave the children with Gerald.
We need to talk."
Ryan started to say something.
"That was not a request," she said.
We met her at the small café on deck four.
It was early enough that most passengers were still asleep.
A crew member brought coffee without being asked.
Patricia sat across from both of us.
She folded her hands on the table.
"I called my sister last night," she said.
"She's a family attorney.
I didn't tell her everything.
I told her enough."
Ryan set down his cup.
"Mom—"
"I'm not done." She looked at him steadily.
"She told me some things I think Claire needs to hear.
About what her options are.
About what documentation matters.
About what the next thirty days look like if Claire decides she wants to protect herself and those children."
"This is not your business," Ryan said.
"You made it my business when you brought that woman onto this ship." Patricia's voice didn't rise.
"You made it my business when your son picked up a microphone in front of a hundred strangers to ask why his father's back only hurts when his mother needs help.
You made it my business, Ryan.
Not me."
Ryan looked away.
Patricia turned to me.
"Claire.
I need you to hear this from me directly.
Whatever happens between you and Ryan — that is your decision.
I will not push you one way or the other.
But I will not pretend I don't know what I know.
And I will not let you walk off this ship without knowing what I know."
I wrapped both hands around my coffee cup.
"She's been in contact with Ryan for over a year," Patricia said.
"Not eight months.
I found messages on the old tablet he left at our house last Christmas.
I didn't understand what I was reading at the time.
I do now."
The café was quiet.
A crew member wiped down a table nearby.
Ryan's jaw was tight.
He was staring at the surface of his coffee.
"A year," I said.
"At least."
Emma had been born seven months ago.
I had been pregnant for nine months before that.
The math was simple and terrible.
"Ryan." My voice came out very calm.
"Was any of it real?"
He looked up.
"The pregnancy.
The hospital.
The night she was born and you cried and you said you'd never been so happy." I held his gaze.
"Was any of it real?"
He opened his mouth.
Then closed it.
That was its own kind of answer.
Patricia reached into her cardigan pocket and set a folded piece of paper on the table between us.
"My sister's number," she said.
May you like
"Call her when you're ready.
She'll know what to do."
