Still Recovering After Giving Birth, I Heard My Husband Saying "I Love You" to the Night Nurse I Had Hired to Care for Our Baby Through the Baby Monitor novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Ginger Tea

Alexis keeps the nurse on and hides a microphone in the nursery; Haley is perfect by day, and at 3:40 the recording catches her lifting the baby and whispering that Mama is here.

Emmett Ridgely closed the gray folder and did not leave.

"I have to ask what you want me to do," he said. "I can pull Ms. Merritt tonight. I'll send someone else and refund the six months."

"No."

He looked at me.

"If you pull her tonight, Ward will know I know," I said. "And everything he says to her will stop."

"Mrs. Wexler, I'm not comfortable with that."

"I'm not comfortable with any of it. I'm also seven weeks out of surgery and I can't chase anyone."

I said it plainly, and I watched him take it in.

"I won't lie to your husband if he asks me a direct question," he said.

"That's fair. Don't volunteer."

"Then keep her on," he said at last. "But the minute you want her out, you call me. Not the front desk. Me."

He wrote his cell number on the back of a card and set it next to my phone.

His handwriting was square and careful.

When he was gone, I went into my studio and unlocked the cabinet where I keep my field kit.

I record interviews on location when I'm not cleaning up other people's podcasts.

The kit holds a small recorder, two lavalier microphones the size of a pea, and a roll of gaffer tape.

I clipped one microphone to the back of the nursery's diaper caddy and taped the wire flat against the wall.

The recorder went into the hollow base of the dresser.

It took twenty minutes and one chair.

Twice I stopped to lean on the crib rail until the pulling in my stomach eased.

Then I held my daughter against my shoulder and she looked up at me with her gray-blue eyes.

"Mommy's very good at her job," I told her.

She sneezed.

Haley came at nine that night with her bag over her shoulder and a paper cup in each hand.

"Ginger tea, no sugar," she said, and held one out. "You told me it settles your stomach. I stopped at the place on Main Street."

I had said that once, in passing, on her second night, five weeks ago.

"Thank you," I said, and took the cup.

It was exactly what I needed.

That was the worst part of her.

She washed her hands to the elbow every time she touched Stella.

She knew which burp the baby needed before the baby fussed.

She never once looked at her phone.

Ward came into the nursery in his work clothes and kissed the top of the baby's head.

"How was your day, Haley?"

"Quiet," Haley said. "Thank you for asking."

"Have you got the funeral sorted?" Ward asked her. "Saturday, you said."

"Saturday at ten."

"I'd like to send flowers," I said.

Ward's smile stayed where it was.

Haley's did not.

"That's so kind," she said after a moment. "It's a private service, though. Just family. She would have wanted it small."

"Of course," I said. "Tell me if you change your mind."

I watched my husband breathe out.

I went to bed at ten.

Ward followed an hour later and was asleep in minutes.

He turned on his side with one hand under his pillow and his lips slightly parted.

I lay on my back with one earbud in.

The microphone in the nursery fed to my phone.

I heard the hum of the humidifier and the baby's slow breathing.

At 12:30 Haley changed a diaper and hummed one line of a song I didn't know.

At 2:15 she fed Stella a bottle of the milk I had pumped that afternoon, and the little suck-click of it was almost too much to listen to.

At 3:40 the nursery went quiet.

I turned the volume up all the way.

I heard the dresser creak as Haley leaned against it.

I heard her pick Stella up out of the crib.

Stella made the small, indignant noise she makes when her sleep is interrupted.

"Shh," Haley said. "It's all right. It's all right."

Her voice was nothing like the voice she used with me.

It was raw and low and so tender it was hard to hear.

"Mama's here," she whispered. "Mama's here, my girl."

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