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Chapter 3

Autor: Shea
After the sip-and-see, Mom stopped yelling at me.

The silence was worse.

Every morning she made breakfast for Mark and a bottle for Noah.

She skipped me with perfect precision.

I started making my own.

She leaned against the kitchen doorway with her arms folded.

"Oh. So now you know how to do something yourself."

On the third day, Mark came home and didn't even check on Noah first.

He locked the front door.

Then stood in the entryway looking at me.

"My mother called me today."

I blinked.

"Susan?"

"Your mom's been calling her every day, crying. Saying you hit her. That you scream at her. That you smash things around the house."

"When did I ever —"

"Let me finish."

His voice was calm.

That frightened me more than shouting.

"Everybody on my side knows what happened at the sip-and-see. Now they're saying I married someone unstable."

He paused.

"My manager pulled me aside at work today. Someone passed the story along. He told me to keep my home life stable and make sure it doesn't affect my job."

"I didn't cause a scene."

"You didn't?"

His voice rose.

"You made your mother cry in front of forty people."

He stepped closer and pointed at the coffee table.

"If you're sick, get treatment. Don't drag the whole family down with you."

If you're sick, get treatment.

He'd said it many times.

He'd never once taken me to a doctor.

On the fifth day I was washing dishes when I heard Mom on the phone in the living room.

Her voice was quiet enough to sound private.

Loud enough for me to hear.

"Yes. She's getting worse. She smashed a bowl a few days ago. I didn't even dare say anything to her."

I'd dropped a bowl while washing it.

My hands had slipped.

"I'm frightened too. What if one day she's holding the baby and she does something —"

She paused.

"Mark told me he can't take much more either."

The plate in my hands went still.

Who was she talking to?

I moved closer to the doorway.

Her last sentence came through clearly.

"All right. You talk to her too, then. She listens to you."

She hung up.

I stepped back into the kitchen and pretended I'd heard nothing.

But I understood.

She was building the story before anything happened.

On the seventh morning I woke up and the apartment had changed.

Mom's suitcase was gone.

Her closet was empty.

So were Noah's clothes.

His bottles.

His blankets.

Even the toy that hung over his crib.

I ran through every room.

Living room.

Bedroom.

Nursery.

Empty.

I called Mom.

Once. Twice. Five times.

She answered on the sixth.

"Stop calling. He's with me."

"Where did you take him?"

"Home. Why?"

"You had no right —"

"No right?"

Her voice sharpened.

"You can't hold a bottle without dropping it. You creep into his room in the middle of the night. You are not well."

My whole body shook.

"I'm not unstable. I have postpartum depression."

"Same thing. Who in their right mind would leave a baby with you?"

"Did Mark agree to this?"

Silence, for about a second.

"Ask him yourself."

She hung up.

My phone was shaking. No — my hand was.

I checked Mark's location.

He wasn't at work.

His car was parked downstairs.

I went out to the balcony.

He was leaning against the driver's door, talking on the phone.

Smiling.

I couldn't hear him.

But I could read his lips.

"Don't worry. She can't do anything."

I stepped backward.

My back hit the doorframe.

My phone buzzed again.

The family group chat.

Mom had sent a sixty-second voice message.

I played it.

Her voice trembled with practiced grief.

"Everyone — I really didn't want to air this in public, but I can't handle it anymore.

"Nina's mental state has gotten worse since the baby was born. She's angry all the time. She throws things. She's put hands on me.

"You all saw what happened at the sip-and-see.

"We were afraid she'd hurt Noah, so we had no choice but to take him somewhere safe.

"If she contacts any of you, please don't engage with her. Don't set her off."

Messages appeared one after another.

Uncle Ray: That doesn't sound like Nina. She was never like this.

Carol: She changed after the baby. Doctors say the severe cases can turn violent.

Aunt Marcy: Then get her treated. Right away.

Susan Parker: Mark's exhausted too. Works all day and comes home having to watch her.

Aunt Lorraine: I thought something was off at the sip-and-see. The way she acted was frightening.

I kept scrolling.

Dozens of messages.

Not one of them asked me anything.

Nobody wrote, Nina, are you okay?

I opened a private chat with Marcy.

"Aunt Marcy, I never hit anyone. Mom is lying."

Five minutes passed.

Read.

No reply.

I messaged Ray.

"That's not what happened. Please believe me."

Read.

No reply.

I sent another.

"I'll go to a hospital. I'll be evaluated. I'm not violent."

He finally answered.

"Nina, your mother's only doing what she thinks is best. Get some rest and stop overthinking."

Stop overthinking.

I hated those words more than anything.

Every time I said I was hurting, someone told me I was thinking too much.

As if all my pain existed only because I'd imagined it.

I put my phone face down on the couch and walked out to the balcony.

The tile was spotless.

Before she left, Mom had even scrubbed away the dirt marks.

Nothing remained.

As if those seventeen hydrangeas had never existed.

As if I never had either.

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  • Seventeen Pots of Hydrangeas   Chapter 10

    I rented a small place in the city.A one-bedroom.Not much space.But it had a balcony.The day I moved in, Beth helped me hang the curtains and then went home.I sat alone in the empty living room.Four white walls. Almost no furniture.Quiet enough to hear myself breathing.The next day I drove out to a garden center.A woman working the outdoor aisles asked what I was after."Hydrangeas.""How many?""Seventeen."She blinked."You opening a shop?"I smiled and didn't explain.I picked out seventeen young plants.Pink. Blue. White. Every shade they had.While she was loading them into the car she said, "Hydrangeas are easy enough. Give them water and give them light and they'll bloom on their own."I knelt on the balcony and planted them one at a time.Fresh soil, soft under my fingers. Dig the hole. Set the roots in. Press it gently closed.I'd just finished the ninth pot when I heard babbling behind me.I turned around.Noah was in his walker, slapping the t

  • Seventeen Pots of Hydrangeas   Chapter 9

    The day I was discharged was gray and overcast.Rachel pushed my wheelchair.Beth carried my things.Nobody else came.Mom had gone back home.Before she left, she asked a nurse to give me a note."Nina, I've been hard all my life. Don't hate me for it."I read it for a long time.Then folded it and put it in my pocket.I didn't throw it away.I didn't answer it either.Some things don't get settled by a note.I stayed at Beth's for two months.Healing on one side. Fighting the custody case on the other.Rachel put together detailed diagnostic and treatment records.Beth helped me find an attorney.I went to court in the wheelchair, one leg still in a cast.Mark sat across the aisle in a suit and tie, his attorney beside him."Ms. Whitfield has a documented history of severe postpartum depression and a serious suicide attempt," his lawyer said."Given her present condition, she is not in a position to assume primary responsibility for a child under two."Mr. Parker

  • Seventeen Pots of Hydrangeas   Chapter 8

    Eighteen days in, I was still in casts, but I was taking my medication on schedule.Rachel came every afternoon.Sometimes we talked for half an hour. Sometimes an hour.I was talking more.Not the old way, where every sentence came out carefully and I was always ready to swallow it back down.Actually talking.About being afraid. About being angry. About things I'd never said to anyone."I think it started while I was pregnant."One night I just couldn't make myself move. I lay there and didn't want to go anywhere."I told Mark. He said, 'You don't do much all day. What have you got to be tired from?'"So I stopped saying it."Rachel wrote all of it down.She never interrupted me once.That afternoon, Mark came.He hesitated at the door, then took a document out of his bag.The same divorce agreement."My attorney says going through the courts would be cleaner for everyone."I looked at him.He'd lost weight.The circles under his eyes were dark.The mess online ha

  • Seventeen Pots of Hydrangeas   Chapter 7

    Three days after the video went up, local reporters started coming.I didn't want to see them.Beth kept them away.But some things couldn't be kept out.Rachel Lane came.She was the nurse practitioner from the clinic who'd done our postpartum home visit.She didn't hover in the doorway the way everyone else did.She walked straight to the bed and sat down."Nina, I'm Rachel Lane. I came out to your apartment for a postpartum visit. Do you remember me?"I did.That day she'd asked how I was feeling, and before I could answer, my mother had taken the question off me."I didn't manage to help you then," she said.Her voice was steady, but her eyes were red."I'm not going to let that happen twice."She opened a notebook."Will you talk to me?"I held on to the edge of the blanket for a long time before I could say anything.Then, almost too quietly to hear: "I planted seventeen hydrangeas."I used to picture it. Taking his hand, walking him out onto the balcony, crouch

  • Seventeen Pots of Hydrangeas   Chapter 6

    After five days in the ICU, I was moved to a regular room.Multiple fractures, a ruptured spleen that had to be operated on, bleeding inside my skull.The doctors said waking up at all was a miracle.It didn't feel like one.It just hurt.The second day after the transfer, Beth came.The one who'd asked me at the sip-and-see whether I was all right.She came in gripping her phone.Her eyes were red, like she'd been crying on and off for days."Nina."She sat down beside the bed.Her voice shook."That message you sent me. I saw it."I looked at her.I barely remembered. I'd messaged so many people that night that all of it had blurred."You wrote, 'Beth, I never hit anyone. Mom is lying.'"She turned the phone toward me.Underneath it, one small gray word.Read.No reply."I saw it," she said quietly."I sat there for a minute and then I told myself not to get in the middle of somebody else's family."Her tears started."I'm sorry."I didn't say anything.It wa

  • Seventeen Pots of Hydrangeas   Chapter 5

    I thought dying would be quiet.It wasn't.The instant the wind poured into my ears it was deafening.Then a dull sound.Not from outside me. From inside — the sound of bone breaking.Did it hurt?I couldn't say.It was like being dropped into ice water. I couldn't feel anything and I could feel all of it at once.I think I heard someone shouting.Far away — far enough to be through an entire building.Then there was nothing.No wind, no sound, no pain.Nothing at all.I don't know how long it lasted.Then something started ticking near my ear. Once, then again, regular, like something counting a heartbeat.The smell of disinfectant got into my nose and stung until I wanted to sneeze, but I couldn't make my body do it."Nina? Nina! Can you hear me?"That voice was close.Too close. It went through my temples.I tried to open my eyes.The light was too bright, and I shut them again.When I managed it a second time, I saw a white ceiling.Then Mom's face leaned into

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