Zora almost laughed. The sound cracked. "I keep thinking about the teddy. How stupid is that."
"It is not stupid. Your brain grabs objects when people fail. Especially when the people are supposed to be load-bearing walls."
They sat. Camille poured tea. Zora drank because her body still wanted ordinary care. Upstairs, a floorboard creaked—Caleb, pacing, or sitting, or learning the shape of a night he had made with the woman who had raised his wife.
"What do you want tonight," Camille asked. "Not forever. Tonight."
"I want the guest room occupied by him and not by me. I want you to sleep on the sofa if you can stand it. I want no speeches about saving the marriage before I have eaten breakfast tomorrow. And I want you to understand that I do not know yet whether Mama is barred from my life or only from my labor room. Those are different doors. I am holding both open and closed at once, and it hurts."
Camille squeezed her hand. "Done. All of it. Including the holding."
"And I want you to come with me to the OB on Thursday. He can drive. He can sit in the waiting room. You sit with me in the exam room unless I say otherwise."
"Done."
Later, after Camille had claimed the sofa with a borrowed quilt, Zora lay in the bedroom that still smelled faintly of Caleb's cologne and her own shea butter and the citrus cleaner they used on Saturdays. She placed both palms on her belly.
"I am still here," she whispered to the baby. "I am still the person who will protect your mornings. The rest is paperwork and courage, and I have not finished either yet. Your grandmother is complicated now. That is not your fault. It will never be your fault."
The baby pressed back, a heel or a fist, as if filing the message.
Morning did not apologize. Light came through the bedroom blinds in ordinary bars. Zora woke to the baby's restlessness and the distant sound of Camille making coffee like a person who refused to let catastrophe cancel caffeine. She sat up slowly, cataloguing her body: swollen ankles, tight band of pressure under the ribs, the particular ache at the base of her spine that meant she had slept on her left side too long and also not long enough.
In the kitchen, Caleb stood at the counter in yesterday's jeans and a clean grey shirt, pouring oatmeal as if oatmeal could become evidence of reform. He looked at Camille first, then at Zora, then at the floor.
"I can go to work late," he said. "Or not go."