Chapter 8: Dated Sunday, Nine A.M.

Ward had told me not to talk to Emmett Ridgely again, and he had promised to explain on Friday.

I had slept on Hattie's couch with that sentence going round my head: he doesn't know what he's walking into.

I decided Ward could keep his Friday, and I would keep my questions.

Stella's eight-week checkup was on Tuesday at ten.

Hattie drove us and sat in the waiting room with a magazine she was not reading.

I carried the car seat myself, on principle.

The cut in my belly did not agree.

The pediatrician was a brisk woman in her fifties with reading glasses on a beaded chain.

She weighed Stella, measured her, and ran a thumb down her spine.

"Fourteen ounces up since the last visit," she said. "She's thriving."

"Good," I said.

The pediatrician sat on her little rolling stool and looked at me over her glasses.

"Mrs. Wexler, I want to ask how you're doing."

"I'm tired."

"Of course. May I ask how you're sleeping?"

"Four hours, broken. I've kept a log."

I opened my phone and showed her the spreadsheet.

I keep a spreadsheet for everything.

It lists every feed, every diaper and every hour I had slept for seven weeks, in color-coded columns.

She read it, and her eyebrows rose.

"This is very thorough."

"I'm an audio editor. We like timestamps."

She laughed, a little uncertainly, and then she opened a folder on her desk and went quiet.

"I need to tell you something," she said. "I received a call on Friday from your night nurse."

"Haley."