“Oh — is she outside?”

Ethan sighed, the sigh of a man being asked to deal with something tedious.

“I changed it,” he said.

My chest tightened.

“You changed the passcode while I was in the hospital?” “You needed some boundaries, Natalie,” he said, and his voice had gone cold in a way I had heard before, but never aimed so directly at me.

“Mom thinks you’ve gotten way too comfortable.

Like this house is yours.” I looked up through the rain at the illuminated windows, at the second-floor balcony, at the soft glow of the nursery I had spent months decorating — the pale walls I had painted myself, the mobile I had hung above the crib, the whole small careful world I had built for the daughter now sleeping against my chest, on the wrong side of a locked door.