“He was screaming,” Daniel said.
“I was trying to keep him from slipping.”
Megan’s voice came from the consultation room doorway.
“That isn’t what happened.”
Daniel spun around.
The nurse beside Megan placed a steadying hand near her elbow but did not touch her.
Megan looked twenty years older than she had on my porch.
Mascara shadowed the skin beneath her eyes.
Her lower lip trembled.
“You were angry,” she said.
“You kept telling him to stop.”
Daniel’s shoulders stiffened.
“He’s a baby,” Megan continued.
“He couldn’t stop because you ordered him to.”
“Be careful,” Daniel said.
The clinician took one step closer.
“Is that a threat?”
Daniel looked at the tablet again.
“No.
She’s upset.
She doesn’t know what she’s saying.”
Megan laughed once, a small, broken sound.
“I know exactly what I’m saying.”
She told us what had happened.
Noah had been crying shortly after midnight.
Megan had fed him, changed him, and walked with him until her legs shook.
Daniel had an early meeting and kept complaining that the noise was coming through the bedroom wall.
At two in the morning, he entered the nursery and told Megan to give him the baby.
She refused at first.
Daniel accused her of believing he was incapable of caring for his own son.
He took Noah from her arms and ordered her to lie down.
For several minutes, the crying stopped.
Then it began again, louder.
Megan returned to the nursery and found Daniel standing beside the crib with both hands around Noah’s middle.
“He wasn’t shaking him,” she said quickly, as though even then she needed us to understand the boundary Daniel had not crossed.
“But he was gripping him.
Hard.
He had his fingers pressed into Noah’s sides, and he was telling him to be quiet.”
I closed my eyes for one second.
I could see it too clearly: my grandson small enough to fit along one forearm, my son’s hands around his body, anger demanding obedience from someone only eight weeks old.
“What did you do?” the clinician asked Megan.
“I took Noah away.”
“And then?”
“I told Daniel he’d hurt him.”
“What did he say?”
Megan looked at Daniel.
“He said I was dramatic.”
Daniel shook his head.
“That isn’t what I said.”
“You said babies were tougher than they looked.”
“I was trying to calm you down.”
“You were trying to make me doubt what I saw.”
The hallway became quiet again.
For the first time, Megan’s voice carried more anger than fear.
She explained that Noah had finally fallen asleep against her chest.
When she changed him near dawn, she noticed the marks beginning to darken.
