Her Husband's Other Life novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: The Crib

The crib came up Linden Street on a flatbed at eleven the next morning.

It was the small wooden one I had found on sale three weeks ago, the one Ross wouldn't let me buy.

It had a red bow on the headboard the size of a dinner plate.

Two delivery men carried it up to the second landing, and Ross walked behind them in a navy blazer with his hands full of tissue paper.

I stood in the doorway with Allie at my shoulder.

"Cora," he said, and he sounded relieved and proud. "I know it isn't enough."

"Where did you get the money?"

"I took it out of my own account, I swear." He held up the receipt. "It's paid for. Every piece. I bought it the day you told me you wanted it."

"The day I told you I wanted it was three weeks ago."

"I was wrong."

He said it loudly enough for the whole stairwell, and the whole stairwell was listening.

Across the landing the neighbor in the bathrobe had opened her door again.

This morning she was dressed, in a loose yellow sweater, with her hand on the small of her back.

A man on the stairs below us had stopped with a laundry basket.

"I'd like to make it right," Ross said. "I don't want the baby coming home to nothing."

"The baby is coming home to Allie's couch," I said.

"Cora, please."

"You'd like the crib in the apartment, so that when someone asks, you bought a crib."

His mouth tightened.

"That isn't fair."

"It's accurate."

I looked at the crib.

It was beautiful, and pale, and the slats were turned in a way I had liked the first time I saw them.

Then I looked at the neighbor, who was looking at the crib too and trying not to.

"Excuse me," I said to her. "Do you have one yet?"

She blinked. "A crib? No. We're sleeping on an air mattress, honestly. Due in June."

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