Chapter 3 - The Quartet Kept PlayingI did not go back downstairs to make a scene.
I want to be clear about that, because everyone who's heard this story since has expected a dramatic confrontation in front of forty guests, my mother's champagne glass shattering on marble, something cinematic. That's not what happened. I have thought about why, many times since, and I think the honest answer is that some kinds of rage are too large for a room full of strangers in cocktail dresses. Some things need silence to be dealt with properly.
I carried Theo down the stairs myself, still tucked inside my coat, with Simone beside me wrapped in the first jacket I could find in the hall closet. My mother saw us crossing the foyer toward the front door and detached herself from a cluster of guests, moving toward us with the quick, controlled smile of a hostess managing an unexpected wrinkle in her evening.
"Darling, where are you two running off to? You'll miss the—"
"We're leaving," I said. "Tonight. For good."
Her smile faltered, just slightly, just enough that I knew she understood I wasn't talking about the party.
"Don't be dramatic. It's freezing out. Theo needs to be—"
"Theo needed to not be alone in a room with the window open," I said, quiet enough that only she could hear it over the quartet. "Simone needed you to not lock her out of her own son's nursery. I needed you to not spend six weeks telling my wife she was losing her mind so you could host a party without a crying baby getting in the way."
My mother's face went through several expressions very quickly, and landed, finally, on something almost bored. "You're overreacting. Ask any of my friends, half of them have opened a window to air out a stuffy room. You've always been dramatic when you're tired, ever since you were a boy—"
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"Goodnight, Mother."
I walked past her. The string quartet kept playing behind us, some guests glancing over with polite, confused curiosity, most of them too absorbed in their champagne to notice that the hostess's son had just walked out the front door carrying his six-week-old baby and his shaking wife, and hadn't looked back once.
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