The yellow cab ride from JFK across the bridge had cost forty-two dollars, and I had tipped the driver ten more just to get home twenty minutes faster. I had spent twelve hours on a flight from Munich, my mind occupied by thoughts of my three-week-old son and my wife. My work as a mechanical engineer often kept me on long overseas shifts, but this time, the distance had felt like an anchor dragging behind me.
The key turned in the lock, but the heavy oak door did not budge because the deadbolt was already thrown from the inside. I leaned my forehead against the cold wood of our Park Slope apartment and listened. Usually, the low hum of the television or the murmur of Maya’s voice would drift through the crack, but the hallway was entirely silent.
I knocked three times, my knuckle striking the brass house number.
“Maya,” I called out, keeping my voice low so I would not wake the baby. “It is David. I caught the early flight.”
A latch clicked inside. The door swung back slowly, revealing my wife standing in the dark.
She was wearing her winter coat over her flannel pajamas. Her right hand was pressed flat against her stomach, right over her surgical incision. She looked at me with dry, hollow eyes, her face pale under the faint light from the exit sign behind me.
“The heat went out yesterday,” she said. Her voice was barely a whisper.
I stepped into the hallway and shut the door behind me. The air inside the apartment was so cold my breath formed a faint white mist. It was freezing, colder than the street outside.
“Where is my mother?” I asked. “Where is Eleanor?”
Maya did not answer. She turned and walked slowly back toward the bedroom, her steps short and guarded, her hand never leaving her side.
I followed her through the dark living room. My boots clicked on the bare hardwood floor. The furniture looked exactly as it had when I left three weeks ago, except for a thick layer of dust on the coffee table.
“She was supposed to stay with you,” I said. “She and Chloe promised they would live here while I was in Germany.”
Maya lay down on the edge of the bed, pulling a heavy wool quilt up to her chin. Her shoulders shook under the layers.
“They left on Tuesday,” Maya said.
“Why?” I asked. “Did Eleanor have an emergency?”
“She said she had plans,” Maya whispered.
I rubbed my gold wedding ring, rotating the metal around my finger. I had wired fourteen thousand dollars to our shared account before I boarded the flight to Munich. It was meant to cover a private night nurse, grocery deliveries, and the extra heating costs for the winter.
“I will get you some hot soup,” I said. “And I will turn on the kitchen burners to warm the place up.”
“The gas is off, David,” she said.
I went into the small kitchen and pulled the chain on the overhead light. The bulb flickered, casting a harsh yellow glare over the white subway tile.
I opened the refrigerator. The shelves were entirely bare. There was no milk, no bread, and none of the pre-made meals I had ordered before my departure. The only thing inside was a small plastic jar of yellow mustard.
On the laminate counter, next to the empty toaster, sat a piece of heavy cream stationery.
I recognized my mother’s elegant, slanted handwriting immediately.
I picked up the paper. The note was brief.
“Maya, we cannot spend our holiday waiting for you to feel better. A real mother does not play the victim. We have taken the spare keys. Eleanor.”
My fingers tightened on the paper. I looked at the empty wooden block where our spare set of keys usually hung.
I stared at the words she had written on the thick cardstock. My mother had sat at our dining table before I left, her voice firm and aristocratic, telling me she would handle everything. She told me to focus on the German pipeline project, promising that she and my sister Chloe would care for Maya and the newborn.
“Maya,” I called out, walking back to the bedroom doorway. “Where is the baby’s formula?”
“They took the boxes,” she said from beneath the quilt. “They said it would spoil if the power went out.”
“They took the baby’s formula?” I asked.
She nodded once, her teeth chattering.
I walked down the narrow hallway to the nursery. The room was tiny, barely big enough for a chest of drawers and the white wicker bassinet we had bought at an estate sale in Greenpoint.
I leaned over the bassinet. Our three-week-old son, Liam, was lying beneath a thin cotton receiving blanket. His tiny hands were blue at the knuckles, and he was not crying. He was making a small, high-pitched clicking sound with every breath.
I unzipped my heavy down winter coat. I lifted my son from the white wicker bassinet, wrapping him tightly in the thick, down-filled fabric of my jacket. I held him close to my chest, feeling the frantic, rapid flutter of his heart.
“We are leaving,” I said, walking back to the bedroom.
Maya was trying to sit up, but the movement made her gasp. She pressed her hand harder against her abdomen, her eyes closing.
“I cannot walk down the stairs, David,” she said.
“I will carry you,” I said.
I set the bundle containing my son on the middle of the bed. I helped Maya slide her legs over the edge, then I lifted her in my arms. She felt dangerously light, her collarbones sharp against my shoulder.
I managed to grab my phone and my wallet from the dresser. I left my suitcase sitting by the front door.
We went down the three flights of stairs in the dark, my knees aching with every step. The air in the building stairwell smelled of old dust and cold steam.
When I pushed through the heavy glass lobby doors, the wind hit us like a physical blow. The temperature had dropped into the teens.
The street was entirely empty. Most of our neighbors had gone away for the holidays, and the brownstones across the avenue were dark.
I stood on the curb of Seventh Avenue, holding my wife in my arms while Liam remained bundled against my chest inside my open coat.
“I trusted them to keep you safe, Maya,” I said.
She did not reply. She only pressed her face into my neck, her breath warm but shallow.
A single yellow cab appeared four blocks away, its roof light glowing in the dark. I raised my arm, my fingers stiffening in the wind.
The cab pulled up to the curb with a squeal of wet brakes. I opened the door with one hand, sliding Maya onto the vinyl back seat first.
I climbed in beside her, pulling the door shut against the freezing wind. The heater inside the cab was blowing lukewarm air, but it felt like a furnace compared to the apartment.
