Heads Up by Madeline Monroe

New father Judah has reached the end of his tether, and prepares to take drastic measures. This story was awarded the 2024 EVVY Award for Outstanding Fiction Prose.

Image generated with OpenAI

As Judah is pouring a fresh batch of coffee into his travel mug, he hears someone moving around the house. He hears soft steps pattering down the stairs, followed by keys clanking as they hit the inside of the ceramic bowl that sits by the front door. Judah puts the mug and the pot of coffee down. Silence fills the house. For a second, the home feels just as it should at 4am. Quiet. Still. The only sound is the soft white noise from the baby monitor. Then, he hears steps shuffling again.

"Kiara," he says. "Is that you?"

He listens as she drops her car keys back into the bowl. They clatter against the hardened clay and Judah's own keys. A few moments later, she appears, stepping out from the dark hallway into the half-lit kitchen. Out of her view, he pulls his green suitcase closer to his body, so that she can't see it from her side of the island.

She stares blankly at Judah, and then moves her gaze to his coffee cup. Moments ago, he mindlessly picked one out of the cupboard, and only now is he realizing it's the one Kiara used to tell him she was pregnant, just over a year ago. It has "World's Best Dad" in obnoxious bold print across the front.

He remembers the way his heart swelled when he realized what Kiara was trying to say. He remembers those few minutes of happiness before the fear crept in. There was just a moment where he wasn't scared.

Maybe in that moment he was the world's best dad, but now he's far from it. Too far to get back, he fears.

Kiara looks back up from the mug to him.

"What are you doing up?"

He notices that her eyes still seem glazed over, like they have for months now. He notices that her brown hair is brushed, for the first time in days, and it's laying down across her shoulders. He notices she's wearing a crewneck that used to be his, but that she claimed as her own before Judah even asked her to be his girlfriend.

Above all, he notices the half-full backpack hanging from her shoulders.

"I'm going to the gym," he says, without having to think much about it. "What are you doing up?"

She takes a step to her right, around the island that stands between them. She looks him up and down.

"You're wearing jeans," she says. Her gaze shifts to the suitcase next to Judah's legs. "And you've packed a bag, and you're making a cup of coffee."

Judah finds himself also staring helplessly at the suitcase. He had planned to be gone by the time Kiara woke up. He was supposed to be hours away when she realized he had left and saw his email. He'd purposely planned it that way. He knew he couldn't face her and tell her he was leaving. He wouldn't have been able to.

Instead of telling Kiara all that, he just says, "You've got a backpack on."

Judah had originally planned on getting coffee on the road, but, at the last minute, he got worried he was going to miss his coffee pot, so he decided that it wouldn't hurt to take ten extra minutes to brew his own batch. His last. He realizes now, that, had he not turned back for that pot of coffee, he wouldn't have been in the kitchen when Kiara was heading out the door, and she would have left thinking he was still in their house with their baby.

He feels his stomach swish and twist at the thought of their child, in this big house, all alone. God, how long would it have taken someone to figure out what had happened? Would the neighbors have even been able to hear her cry?

Kiara does not acknowledge that she has also packed a bag.

"You were going to leave? What about the baby?"

The, rings in Judah's head over and over. The, the, the.

When Kiara first started to seem different, less energy, less color in her cheeks, less emotion in her words, Judah just figured she was tired. She had just struggled through a rocky delivery, and the baby was keeping them both up at night. When, a month later, she still wasn't eating enough and still wasn't sleeping, even when the baby wasn't crying, Judah tried to talk to her. He asked if he could take her to see someone, if they could go away for a weekend and leave the baby with her mother, if she would talk to him. But Kiara didn't want to do any of it. She didn't even listen.

Something was wrong, Judah was sure of that. But Kiara still took great care of their baby. She was so much better at getting her to fall asleep, to drink from the bottle. She always knew exactly when to feed her, put her down, what kind of music they should play for her, what kind of books to read. She did all of that. There were times, when Judah was certain that the thing that was wrong with her must be him.

"I thought I was leaving our baby with you," he says.

"That's not my baby," Kiara mutters, so softly Judah almost doesn't hear.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean I don't feel like that is my baby," she says. "I don't feel like I'm supposed to."

They both have managed to stay calm, which upsets Judah even more, makes his stomach twinge even harder. He's always been a calm and consistent man, especially in stressful situations. But Kiara's always been hot-headed. She lays her fist into the horn when people don't use their blinker, and when she can't get the clasp of a necklace open she often just yanks it off and breaks the chain. Judah was her opposite in that way. He was always there to give an apologetic wave when the drivers flipped Kiara off, or to use his steady hands to undo those tiny necklace clamps. Kiara hasn't lost her temper in months. There's been no fires for Judah to put out, nothing that he can fix.

"She's not my baby," Kiara says, again.

"So you're leaving?"

After a few seconds, Judah can tell that Kiara hasn't heard his question. She's looking right at him, but her head is somewhere else. Before the baby, Judah used to be able to see his wife think with her eyes. She'd glance up for good feelings, down for upsetting ones, to the left when she was unsure. But now, she's staring at him dead on.

It's been like this since the baby was born. It's like Kiara lost something that day. Judah doesn't know what it is, and when he asks her, she just looks at him like this. He can't reach her. She's wasting away, and she won't listen to him, or lose that blank look in her eye. He wants to help her. He's tried. But when they go to the therapist she won't get out of the car, and she doesn't talk to her mom when Judah invites her over. After all the attempts, Judah is certain that the problem is him, and that the only way for his Kiara to return to herself is for him to leave.

"You were going to leave her with me," Kiara says. "I'm empty."

"I don't know what that means," Judah says, despite knowing exactly what she means.

"Have you been looking at me? I don't know why, but this place is - it's eating at me. There's nothing here anymore."

Of course Judah has noticed. She hasn't sat down at the piano since the baby was born. She has said nothing about Judah sleeping on the couch, and she didn't put up a fight when Judah told her his office asked him to come back early from paternity leave.

"And that's why you're leaving?"

"It's all I can think to do to fix it."

He notices her staring at the pot of coffee he's put on the counter. The first time he made Kiara a cup of coffee was in his college dorm room, after they spent the night squished next to each other in a twin bed, pretending they were asleep, listening to each other breathe. She told him it was the best cup of coffee she'd ever had. He remembers that moment when he leaves the pot half full for her before he leaves for work in the morning.

He watches her stare at the pot, and he's unsure what to say, as he often is with her these days. Is she even looking at the coffee? Or is her brain going somewhere else?

"Do you want a cup -"

"Can I have a cup -"

He almost laughs, and she just barely smiles. It's so peculiar. Here they are, each planning to leave the other without a goodbye, and they're still having the urge to say the same thing at the same time. They're both planning to leave everything they've ever cared about behind, but unable to say no to one last cup of coffee.

"Yeah," Judah says. He goes over to the cabinet above the sink to grab a mug, and she sits down at the island, across from him. Judah only made enough for a single cup, figuring if he left extra for Kiara it would just get cold. So they each get half a cup of coffee.

"Should I make another?"

"I mean..." she starts. "I think this is enough for me."

"Okay."

So they both sit down over a cup of coffee, for the first time in ages. Before she got pregnant, before she got tired, she would wake up early to have a cup of coffee with Judah before he left for work. Judah wonders if she is also thinking of those mornings now. He wants to ask, but doesn't.

That was before Judah had to start staying late at work, like he does now most nights. It's not that he wants to be away, or maybe it is, but he tells himself it's not that. He has a kid now, and kids are expensive. Kiara hasn't gone back to her marketing job yet. She hasn't even mentioned it. So, when the other financial consultant at his office quit, right after Judah's paternity leave was over, he offered to pick up the slack. More hours meant more money. More money meant he didn't have to ask Kiara to go back to work. It meant he had enough to leave with Kiara to get back on her feet after he was gone.

He moved $3,000 into a separate account for himself and left everything else for Kiara. Once he gets settled at his new job, he has every intention of directly depositing half of every paycheck into the account that was theirs, but is now Kiara's.

He wasn't planning to leave them with nothing. He was ready to give them everything except himself.

He notices Kiara's backpack, only half full. He knows she's doing this on a whim. She wasn't going to leave him with anything.

Judah realizes just how fucked he would have been if she walked out the door. He has no idea how long their baby naps for during the day, or at what age he should start feeding her solid food, or if she's already eating solid food.

He loves his baby. He really does. But he doesn't feel like he could be a father. She's so small, so fragile, and he is scared every second that he is going to ruin her. That he is going to say the wrong thing, and she'll never forget it. Or he's going to work too much and she'll hate him forever. Or he'll trip and drop her down the stairs. Or he won't be able to protect her from everything he wasn't protected from.

If he's not here he can't hurt her, and if he's not here maybe it will stop hurting Kiara. And just maybe they will both be okay.

"Where were you going to go?" she asks.

"My brother's, for a few days," he says, before lowering his voice. "Then to Pittsburg. The office offered to transfer me."

"That's across the fucking country, Judah," Kiara wraps her hands tighter around her mug. "You were going to up and leave your wife and daughter without so much as a second thought."

"There were second thoughts," he insists. "I've set up everything for you. I was going to send you money once I got started there."

"I don't want your fucking money, Judah."

"You've got a bag packed too, remember? Where are you going?"

As soon as the words are out of his mouth, he feels awful about them. He almost never speaks to his wife that way, like he's trying to shame her. Especially lately, with the way she has seemed so fragile.

"I don't know," she says, looking away from him.

"What? You're just going to drive? Does your car even have a full tank?"

"I don't know. I can stop for gas if I need to."

"At 4am?" he asks. "In downtown Denver? That's not safe at all."

"And now you give a damn about my safety?"

Her eyes shoot back up to him so forcefully he almost takes a step backwards. For a moment, Judah is stunned. It takes him a minute to find his voice again.

"Of course I do."

He cares about his wife so much it hurts him. He wants nothing more than for her to be better, to break free from whatever it is that has sucked her down and away from him. As twisted as it is, his plan, every step of the way, has always been in an effort to care for her.

"Of course you do? You've got a bag packed and you were gonna move to Pittsburg, where you've never been in your life, and you weren't going to say a thing about it to me."

"I had an emai-"

"Oh, I'm so glad you were going to send me a fucking email."

And suddenly, his Kiara is back. With her snapping phrases and her fire. Judah puts his elbows down on the table, tips his head down, and sinks his fingers into his thinning, brown hair. Looking at Kiara is too much right now because she's fighting with him the way she used to before she got pregnant, before she went empty. Throughout this whole thing, this is the moment that hurts him the most. It makes him want to ask her if they can go upstairs and unpack.

"Okay, so what do we do now, then?"

"I can't stay," she says, her voice has lost the feeling. It's flat again. He knows then that she will not come back to him.

"I don't think I can either."

They both find themselves staring at the mason jar of change on the counter, next to a dying orchid, and a bottle of prenatal vitamins.

"Flip for it," she whispers.

"You're kidding. Flip for who leaves and who stays?"

Judah and Kiara used to flip for everything. For who was going to do the dishes and who was going to cook. For who was going to drink and who was going to drive. For who got to pick what show they watched before bed. Their pockets and car cup holders and bags used to always be full of quarters.

"What else are we supposed to do?" she asks. "Nothing else is fair."

He wants to tell her that they can both stay.

"Okay," he says instead, reaching into the jar, pulling out a quarter. "Heads you stay. Tails I stay."

"Heads I stay. Tails you stay."

He stands up. He closes his fist together, pressing his thumb underneath his knuckle, and puts the quarter over the divot. His hand is shaking. He takes deep breaths to try to make it stop.

Then he flips, and the quarter goes spinning, soaring into the air. There's no moment where it moves in slow motion. It goes up and falls back down, clattering onto the countertop, behind the droopy orchid, where Kiara can't see it.

"It's tails," he tells her.

Kiara blows out a steady breath through her pursed lips, and he can hear her trying to hide her relief.

"Judah -"

"Kiara," he interrupts. "If you're going to go I need you to just go. Whatever you're going to say, I just can't listen to it."

She stands slowly, walks her coffee cup to the sink, and rinses it out. She turns off the water, reaches to the cupboard above her head, and puts it away with all the other mugs.

She turns, and walks towards Judah. His wife stops right in front of him, and looks straight into his eyes. Her irises look more gray than blue in this lighting. Wrinkles have grown around her mouth. She smiled too much in college, enough that the lines are there even if she hasn't smiled the same in a long time.

"What are you doing?" he asks.

He speaks so softly, even softer than how they spoke to each other over the baby's crib, the night they brought her home. She's so close that she hears every word.

"Deciding if I'm sure," she says.

"How's that going for you?" he asks coldly, hoping she knows he doesn't mean it to be cold.

"I'm sure," she says. She bites her lip, and her eyes well up.

"It's okay," he tells her. The coldness is gone.

"Thank you."

As she walks towards the door, he doesn't let his eyes leave her. She walks around the island, through the living room and to the front door. He watches her fall still. He watches her use both hands to tuck her hair behind her ears. He watches her, to his surprise, turn and look at him one more time. She blinks once, twice, before turning back.

He watches as she reaches out and turns the knob. He watches her step out onto the porch. He watches her go. He wonders if this is a memory he will ever be able to forget.

Once the door latches, his eyes fall to the counter, to the quarter. He stares at the metal on the cold countertop, the jagged edges. He stares and stares and stares until a staticky cry comes from the baby monitor.

He leaves the quarter on the counter top, heads up.