tomorrow if it keeps up.

Derek kept scrolling.

—Maybe.

—I haven’t slept more than ninety minutes in a row since she was born.

That got his attention, but not for the reason I wanted.

He put his phone down, folded his hands, and looked at me with that polished calm men use when they want selfishness to sound reasonable.

—I can’t breathe in this house anymore, he said.

At first I thought he meant the crying.

Or the clutter.

Or the relentless pressure of a newborn rearranging every hour of our lives.

—I know, I said quietly.

We’re both exhausted.

—No, Claire.

I mean me.

He rubbed his face and leaned back in his chair like he was the one whose body had been split open and stitched back together.

—I had this trip planned before she was born, he said.

I already paid for most of it.

Rome, Barcelona, Lisbon.

Four weeks.

I need to go clear my head before I completely lose myself.

For a few seconds I honestly believed I had heard him wrong.

—You need to do what?

—Go away for a month, he said.

Reset.

Breathe.

Come back better.

I stared at him.

Emma shifted against my shoulder and made a sleepy sound.

My stitches throbbed so hard I felt them in my teeth.

—I’m still bleeding, I said.

He let out a frustrated breath.

—Please don’t make this dramatic.

The laugh that came out of me did not sound like mine.

—Dramatic? Derek, our daughter is twenty-eight days old.

—And you’re on maternity leave, he snapped.

You’re home anyway.

My mom said she can check in sometimes.

Babies mostly sleep at this stage.

That sentence changed something in me.

Not all at once.

Not with a bang.

More like a crack spreading through glass.

—You want to leave me alone for a month with a newborn, I said.

—I want one month to remember I’m still a person.

I looked down at Emma’s tiny fist curled against my sweatshirt.

—I used to be a person too, I whispered.

He stood up then, went back to the table, and turned his phone toward me.

Flights.

Hotel confirmations.

Reservation emails.

Terrace photos he had apparently been using to imagine himself somewhere sunlit while I was timing contractions and folding onesies.

He had not dreamed this trip up in panic.

He had planned it while I was pregnant.

—It’s already booked, he said.

If I don’t go now, all that money is wasted.

No one warns you how dangerous that moment can be, the moment you realize you are explaining obvious humanity to somebody who is calculating airfare.

The next morning Derek rolled his suitcase to the front door while I stood in the kitchen burping Emma with one hand and gripping the counter with the other.

He kissed the air near my cheek, adjusted his watch, and said the sentence that finished what the announcement had started.

—You’ll calm down once you see I was right about us needing this.

Then he walked out.

The sound of the suitcase wheels fading down the porch steps is still one of the loneliest sounds I have ever heard.

The first forty-eight hours after he left were not cinematic.

They were ugly, blurry, bodily.

Emma cluster-fed until my shoulders