Still, something in me started paying attention.
It was the same time most nights. Around two in the morning. I only realized that because one night I woke up sweating after a nightmare, and when I grabbed my phone to check the time, it was 2:07.
Ethan’s side of the bed was empty.
I listened, and there was no sound of the toilet flushing or movement elsewhere. Just silence.
I lay there for a minute, too tired to move and too wound up to relax.
Then Noah made a soft, snuffling sound in the bassinet, and I reached for my phone to open the baby monitor app.
The nursery camera was something we’d installed before he was born, even though we thought he would sleep in our room for a while. It was angled in a way that it caught a good chunk of the floor, too.
I’d used it once or twice during daytime naps when I was folding laundry downstairs and wanted to keep an eye on him.
That night, I opened the app mostly to reassure myself that Ethan was in there organizing diapers, wiping down the changing pad, or doing some other random sleep-deprived task.
He wasn’t there live.
