Mine stayed inside me.
I kissed Noah’s forehead.
“You are coming with me,” I said. “Right now.”
Marcus stepped forward. “Lauren, wait. You’re not taking him anywhere.”
I stood slowly, Noah in my arms.
Marcus blocked the doorway.
He was bigger than me. He always had been. Six feet tall, broad-shouldered, strong from years of construction work and weekend boxing classes. Once, that strength had made me feel safe.
Now it just stood between me and the exit.
“Move,” I said.
“Not until we talk.”
Diane appeared behind him wrapped in my sheet like a queen in stolen silk. “You can’t just kidnap his child because you’re angry.”
My arms tightened around Noah.
Marcus looked at our son, then back at me. “Let’s calm down.”
“Noah needs to be evaluated.”
“He doesn’t need a hospital.”
“I’m a pediatric nurse. His skin was cold. He slept on linoleum in an unheated room. He needs to be evaluated.”
“You’re exaggerating.”
“No,” I said. “You’re hoping I will.”
Marcus swallowed.
I shifted Noah higher on my hip. “Move, Marcus.”
He didn’t.
So I did the one thing I had never done in thirteen years of loving him.
I looked him dead in the face and said, “If you do not get out of my way, I will call 911 and tell them my husband is preventing me from taking my possibly hypothermic child to the emergency room after I found him neglected in his care.”
Diane scoffed. “That’s insane.”
I held up my phone.
Marcus stared at it.
My thumb hovered over the emergency call screen.
For a second, nobody moved.
Then Marcus stepped aside.
I walked past him with Noah clinging to my neck.
Behind me, Diane said, “You’ll regret making this ugly.”
I stopped at the front door.
The porch light was still dead. The cold gray morning pressed against the windows. My house no longer felt like a home. It felt like the scene of a crime that had not yet realized it was one.
I turned back.
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