Chapter 9: The Weight Amy Carried
I came home to find Amy on the back porch.
Frederick was asleep inside.
The baby monitor sat on the railing beside her, its green light steady.
She had a glass of water in her hand and she was looking at the yard — the same yard where Teresa had stood in her new dress and told twenty people that Amy's job was to serve them.
I sat down in the chair beside her.
She didn't say anything for a moment.
"Mason cooperated?" she asked.
"Fully."
She nodded slowly.
"Amy." I turned toward her.
"She had you investigated.
Before we were married.
A private investigator's report."
Amy was quiet.
"Did you know?" I asked.
"I suspected." She set her glass down.
"About six months after the wedding, she said something to me.
About a credit card I had paid off before we met.
The balance, the exact amount.
There was no way she could have known that unless she had looked." Amy looked at her hands.
"I didn't tell you because I thought you'd think I was being paranoid.
Or that I was trying to cause a problem between you and her."
"You should have told me."
"I know." She looked up.
"I kept thinking she would let it go.
That once Frederick came, once she saw that I wasn't going anywhere, she would just — accept it." Amy's voice caught slightly.
"She never did."
"She was never going to," I said.
"No." Amy was quiet for a moment.
"In the kitchen that day.
When she told me I couldn't stop.
When she said I had to keep serving until every guest was finished." She stopped.
"You don't have to—"
"I want to say it." She turned to face me.
"I was sitting on that stool with Frederick burning up in my arms, and I thought — I thought maybe she was right.
Maybe I wasn't doing enough.
Maybe I was the problem." Her voice was steady but her eyes were bright.
"I actually thought that.
In my own house.
On my son's birthday."
I reached over and took her hand.
"She worked very hard to make you think that," I said.
"I know." Amy squeezed my hand once, hard.
"I know that now.
But I want you to understand what it felt like to be in that kitchen.
Because I don't think I ever told you how bad it had gotten."
"Tell me," I said.
So she did.
She told me about the phone calls Teresa made while I was at work.
The comments about her cooking, her housekeeping, her body after Frederick was born.
The morning Teresa had arrived unannounced and rearranged the kitchen while Amy was feeding the baby, then told her the old arrangement had been inefficient.
The afternoon she had referred to Frederick as *my grandson* in a way that left no room for Amy in the sentence.
I listened to all of it.
When she finished, the yard was darker.
The monitor light was still steady.
"I'm sorry," I said.
"I should have seen it."
"You trusted her.
That's not a fault." Amy leaned her head back.
"I just needed you to know.
All of it.
Not the version I edited to protect your feelings."
"No more editing," I said.
"No more editing," she agreed.
We sat there for a while.
The neighborhood was quiet.
Somewhere down the street, someone was running a lawnmower in the last of the evening light.
"She's going to trial," Amy said finally.
"Yes."
"Will we have to testify?"
"Probably."
She considered this.
"Good," she said simply.
From inside, a small sound.
Frederick stirring.
The monitor crackled softly.
Amy stood up, but she didn't go in immediately.
She stood at the door and looked back at me.
"Connor.
That blue dress."
"What about it?"
"I put it on this morning." She smiled — the first real one I had seen from her in days.
"It fits perfectly."
May you like
She went inside.
I stayed on the porch a little longer, listening to the lawnmower fade, and the neighborhood settle, and the monitor carry the small sounds of my son waking up in the house that had always been ours.
