Chương 2
“Fine.”
Her voice had gone flat.
“Take her for ice cream, tell her I’m a monster, come back when you’ve both decided I’ve been sufficiently punished.”
“I didn’t say any of that.”
“You don’t have to.”
Daniel crouched and reached for Lily’s left sleeve.
She jerked away.
He froze.
“Can I see?”
Lily looked at Vanessa again.
That second look settled something in him that the red mark had not.
He stood.
“We’re leaving.”
Vanessa’s expression shifted from anger to something more guarded.
“You’re being ridiculous.”
“Maybe.”
“Daniel.”
“I said maybe.”
He took Lily’s backpack, then handed it back when she immediately reached for it.
She would not let him carry it.
That bothered him too.
Outside, the late-afternoon air had the dry September warmth that made the neighborhood smell faintly of cut grass and hot pavement.
Daniel put Lily in the passenger seat because his truck was old enough to have no usable back seat, then stood with the door open while she tied her sneakers.
Her fingers fumbled the first knot twice.
“Where are we going?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Are we coming back?”
He almost said of course.
The answer had been waiting automatically behind his teeth.
Instead he said, “Not until I figure out what’s going on.”
Lily concentrated on her shoe.
Vanessa appeared on the front porch.
She had not put on shoes.
“Dan, can we please talk like adults before you turn this into something it isn’t?”
He shut Lily’s door.
“We’ll talk.”
“When?”
“When she’s not standing there listening.”
“You’re scaring her.”
Daniel looked through the window.
Lily was staring straight ahead.
“I think she was scared before I got here.”
Vanessa’s face went still.
For the first time since he had entered the house, she seemed uncertain.
Daniel hated the small surge of satisfaction that gave him.
He hated it because marriage had taught him how easily fear could disguise itself as victory during an argument.
He got behind the wheel and drove away.
For three blocks Lily said nothing.
Daniel did not turn on the radio.
At the first red light, she asked, “Are you mad at me?”
“No.”
“At Vanessa?”
He tightened his hands on the wheel.
“I’m trying not to decide things before I understand them.”
“That means yes.”
Despite himself, he glanced at her.
She was watching a woman push a stroller across the intersection.
“That sounded like your mother.”
Lily’s mouth moved almost into a smile.
Her mother, Rachel, had been dead five years, but sometimes she still entered a room through a sentence.
Daniel had learned not to chase those moments.
They disappeared when handled.
“Can we go to Aunt Mara’s?”
He looked at her again.
His younger sister lived twenty minutes away and had the particular talent of asking questions that made people regret answering the phone.
“Why Mara’s?”
Lily shrugged.
“She has the blue room.”
“The guest room?”
Lily nodded.
“You want to sleep there?”
Another shrug.
Daniel pulled into the parking lot of a pharmacy.
“I need to see your arm first.”
Her shoulders rose.
“Why?”
“Because if you’re hurt, I need to know.”
“I’m not hurt.”
“Then let me look.”
She pressed herself against the door.
“No.”
Daniel sat back.
A shopping cart rolled loose across the parking lot until an employee in a green vest caught it one-handed.
A man came out of the store carrying three bags of ice and arguing into his phone about somebody named Curtis.
Ordinary Saturday life went on around them with insulting ease.
Daniel rubbed his thumb over a crack in the steering wheel.
“I’m not going to make you show me.”
Lily looked at him suspiciously.
“But I need you to tell me if Vanessa hurt you.”
“She gets mad.”
“So do I.”
“Not like her.”
Daniel swallowed.
“How is it different?”
Lily picked at a loose thread on her jeans.
“She says I make things hard.”
“For her?”
“For everybody.”
He waited.
“She says you’re tired all the time because of me.”
Daniel turned toward her fully.
“She told you that?”
Lily’s eyes filled.
“She says if I keep making trouble, you’ll get sick of it.”
He felt the first clean flash of rage then, hot enough that his hand moved toward the door handle.
Lily grabbed his sleeve.
“Don’t go back.”
He stopped.
Her grip was startlingly strong.
“Okay.”
“You promise?”
“I promise I’m not going back right now.”
She released him slowly.
Daniel took out his phone.
There were four messages from Vanessa.
The first asked him to come home.
The second said Lily was manipulating him.
The third said they needed to present a united front.
The fourth contained only three words.
Check her backpack.
Daniel looked at the bag between Lily’s feet.
She saw him looking and pulled it onto her lap.
“What’s in there?”
“School stuff.”
“Vanessa says I should check it.”
The color drained from Lily’s face.
Daniel wished immediately that he had lied.
“What does she think is in it?”
“Nothing.”
“Lil.”
“Please don’t.”
He put the phone facedown in the cup holder.
“All right.”
She stared at him.
“I won’t open it without your permission.”
Her lower lip trembled.
“Even if she tells you to?”
“Even then.”
Lily hugged the backpack.
Daniel started the truck again and called Mara through the dashboard.
She answered on the sixth ring.
“If you’re calling to ask whether Mom’s birthday is next weekend, it is, and yes, you already agreed to bring the cake.”
“Mara.”
She went quiet.
“What happened?”
“I need somewhere for Lily and me to stay tonight.”
A pause followed.
Then Mara said, “Come over.”
No questions.
That frightened him more than questions would have.
Mara met them in her driveway wearing gardening gloves and an Orioles T-shirt so old the logo had cracked into orange islands.
She took one look at Lily and did not hug her.
Instead she held up both dirt-covered hands.
“I’m technically a biohazard.”
May you like
Lily gave her a small smile.
“Tomatoes?”
