Chapter 6: The Man at the Door
I was in the hallway before I'd made a conscious decision to move.
Ethan was sitting up on the couch, phone pressed to his ear, his casted wrist braced against his knee.
When he saw me, something moved across his face — not guilt this time.
Something closer to relief.
"Hold on," he said into the phone.
Then, to me: "It's Dana.
The man who got her pregnant — he found her new address.
He's outside her building right now."
I stood there in my robe in the grey morning light.
"How did he find her?" I asked.
"She doesn't know.
She thinks someone from her old building told him." He held the phone out slightly, and I could hear a woman's voice on the other end, tight and fast and frightened.
I made a decision.
"Tell her to stay inside and not open the door," I said.
"And call the police."
Ethan relayed it.
Then: "She says she doesn't want to call the police.
He hasn't technically done anything yet and she's afraid it'll make him angrier."
"That's not how this works." I crossed to the couch and held out my hand.
"Give me the phone."
He looked at me for a moment.
Then he handed it over.
"Dana," I said.
A sharp intake of breath on the other end.
"Mrs.
Calloway—"
"Listen to me.
You call the police.
You tell them there is a man outside your building who has been harassing you and you are frightened.
You do not open that door for any reason.
Do you understand me?"
"He'll say I'm overreacting.
He always says that."
"He's standing outside your home at two in the morning.
That is not overreacting.
That is evidence."
A long pause.
"Okay," she said quietly.
"Call me back when they've come and gone."
I handed the phone back to Ethan.
He was watching me with an expression I couldn't quite read.
"Thank you," he said.
"Don't thank me yet." I sat down in the armchair across from him.
"We're going to talk now.
All of it.
From the beginning.
And you are not going to decide what to leave out."
He nodded.
"Start with how it started."
He did.
It took almost an hour.
He told me about Dana coming to him in March, crying quietly at her desk after a phone call she'd tried to hide.
How he'd brought her a cup of tea and she'd looked so startled by the small kindness that it had broken something in him.
How her situation with the man — his name was Marcus — had gotten worse through the summer.
How Ethan had started checking in on her, first at work, then by text, then occasionally over coffee when things were bad.
He told me about the eight hundred dollars.
About the apartment on Tillman Street.
About the Thursday appointment he'd offered to drive her to.
He told me he had never touched her.
Never wanted to.
That she reminded him, in some way he found hard to explain, of his younger sister — the one who had died when they were both in their twenties, the one he still didn't talk about easily.
I listened to all of it.
When he finished, the room was lighter.
The boys would be awake soon.
"Why didn't you tell me?" I asked.
"Not at the end.
From the beginning.
Why didn't you come home in March and say, there's a woman at my office who's in a bad situation and I want to help her?"
He was quiet for a moment.
"Because I knew how it would sound."
"How would it have sounded?"
"Like what you thought when you saw the test."
"And instead," I said, "you hid it for four months and it sounded exactly like that anyway.
Only worse, because now there's a secret attached to it."
He looked at his hands.
The cast on his wrist.
"I know."
"I need you to understand something." I leaned forward.
"I'm not angry that you helped her.
I'm angry that you decided I couldn't handle knowing about it.
That you looked at me — your wife, the person you made two children with — and decided I was someone who needed to be managed."
He looked up.
"I'm not fragile, Ethan."
"I know you're not."
"Then stop treating me like I am."
Dana called back at 3:40 AM.
The police had come.
Marcus had been spoken to and had left.
She was shaken but safe.
I took the call.
I told her I was glad she was okay.
I told her to document everything and to call again if he came back.
When I hung up, Ethan was watching me again with that same unreadable expression.
"What?" I said.
"I just—" He stopped.
Tried again.
"I don't know a lot of people who would do that.
Under the circumstances."
I stood up.
"I'm going to make coffee.
The boys will be up in twenty minutes."
I walked to the kitchen.
Behind me, I heard him say, very quietly, "I'm sorry, Nora."
I filled the kettle.
Turned on the burner.
"I know," I said.
But sorry, I was learning, was only the beginning of a much longer conversation.
And there was still one thing he hadn't told me — one thing I'd noticed in the hour of his explanation, a gap so small he might not have realized I'd caught it.
May you like
He'd told me everything about Dana.
He hadn't once mentioned why Marcus knew Ethan's name.
