Then, almost too quietly to hear:
“I’m sorry. I didn’t understand.”
Tears slid into my hairline as I lay there listening.
Maybe he was talking to Maisie.
Maybe he was talking to me.
The next morning, the timer sat on the kitchen counter with the tape peeled off.
“I threw it away,” Gerald said quietly. “And I called someone to repair the valve. I shouldn’t have touched it.”
I believed he meant it.
But healing takes longer than apologies.
Before Robert left two days later, he pulled Gerald aside and made him repeat the baby’s schedule out loud like a student preparing for an exam.
At the front door, he squeezed my shoulder gently.
“If this nonsense starts again,” he told me, “you call me.”
The following morning, I stepped into the shower and simply stood there beneath the hot water.
No timer.
No shouting.
No footsteps outside the door.
Just steam filling the room and warm water easing weeks of tension from my body.
I washed my hair slowly.
I let the conditioner sit.
I stayed there long enough to remember that I was still a person, not just a machine keeping everyone else alive.
When I finally walked out, Gerald sat in the nursery holding Maisie asleep against his chest.
He looked up at me softly.
“Take as long as you need.”
That sentence alone didn’t fix everything.
But it was a beginning.
