Chapter 8: Page Nine

At eleven that night a text came in from a number I did not know.

It was a photograph of page nine, nothing else. No words.

I knew whose number it was before I saved it.

I put Hazel down in the crib in the bedroom and left the door open a crack.

Then I sat on the couch in the dark with the phone in both hands.

At one in the morning I gave up and texted Rafe.

Are you awake?

He wrote back in under a minute. I'm in the lobby. I was about to ask the same.

He came up with his tablet and two paper cups of tea from the all-night machine.

He sat at the other end of the couch, and I held out my phone.

"Read it with me," I said. "I can't read it alone."

He enlarged the photograph on his tablet and set it on the cushion between us.

The type was small and neat.

I made myself read it out loud, slowly, the way I used to read contracts to the school board.

"Nine point one. The costs of the birth and hospital stay shall be shared equally by both spouses."

"You know that part."

"Nine point two. Any unplanned procedure is paid by the spouse who requests it."

"Yes."

"Nine point three. Funds paid toward a household cost from any account of either spouse become household property of both on the date of payment."

I read the next sentence twice.

"Claire Harlan's personal account is the account ending in four-four-one-seven."

I stopped.

"That's mine," I said. "That's my own checking account."

"Keep going."

"Nine point four. Each spouse waives any claim that funds so paid are separate property."

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