Chương 4
“Give me the number.”
“Claire, there may be an explanation.”
“That would be wonderful.”
She found a pen beside the detergent and wrote the digits across the back of an unopened electric bill while Margaret read them.
The first six meant nothing.
The last four did.
Claire stared at them until they became shapes instead of numbers.
“Claire?”
“That was my mother’s old landline.”
“You’re certain?”
“I dialed it from memory until I was twenty-seven.”
“Was it disconnected?”
“Years ago.”
Daniel said through the doorway, “What number?”
Claire covered the phone.
“Why?”
“What?”
“Why do you care what number?”
“Because you look like you’re going to be sick.”
She uncovered the phone.
“Margaret, don’t change anything in the register.”
“I won’t.”
“Don’t give it to anybody.”
“I won’t.”
“And don’t call Daniel.”
Daniel’s expression tightened.
Margaret said, “Your husband?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t have his number.”
“Good.”
Claire ended the call.
For a moment Daniel simply stared at her.
Then he said, “That was unnecessary.”
“What was?”
“Telling her not to call me.”
“Was it?”
“Yes.”
“Give me your phone.”
“No.”
“Then we’re done pretending this is me being irrational.”
“Claire, lower your voice.”
“Don’t manage me.”
“I’m trying not to have this conversation with Lucy ten feet above us.”
“Then tell me why you lied.”
His face changed.
It was small again, that almost invisible surrender around his mouth.
Claire felt colder seeing it than she would have if he had shouted.
“I didn’t lie about the certificate.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“You asked if I knew St. Gabriel’s.”
“And you said no.”
“I’ve been there once.”
The admission hung between them.
“When?”
“Last year.”
“Why?”
Daniel looked toward the ceiling.
“Your mother asked me to take her.”
Claire stared at him.
Evelyn had spent the last fourteen months of her life moving between doctors, infusion rooms, her condominium, and finally a hospice facility where the staff kept bowls of wrapped peppermints beside every elevator.
Daniel had helped more than Nathan had.
Claire had been grateful for that.
She had been grateful enough not to ask about every appointment.
“What did she want there?”
“She didn’t tell me.”
“You drove my mother to a church I’d never heard of and didn’t ask why?”
“I asked.”
“And?”
“She told me to wait in the car.”
“You waited?”
“Yes.”
“How long?”
“Maybe twenty minutes.”
“What happened when she came out?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing.”
“She got back in the car.”
“That is a description of entering a vehicle.”
“She was upset.”
“How?”
Daniel rubbed his thumb along the edge of his phone.
“She’d been crying.”
Claire pictured her mother crying and rejected the image almost immediately.
Evelyn had considered public tears a kind of littering.
At Claire’s father’s funeral, she had stood through the entire service with one hand locked around Claire’s wrist and had not cried until three weeks later, when a jar of pasta sauce slipped from a grocery bag and shattered on the garage floor.
“What did she say?”
“Not much.”
“Daniel.”
“She asked me whether I loved Lucy.”
Claire went still.
“Exactly like that?”
“Yes.”
“What did you say?”
“What do you think I said?”
“I’m not interested in what I think anymore.”
His eyes flickered.
“I said yes.”
“And then?”
“She asked if there was anything that could change that.”
Claire heard the washing machine pipes knock somewhere inside the wall.
“What did you say?”
“I told her no.”
“And you never mentioned this to me.”
“She was dying.”
“That doesn’t answer the question.”
“She made me promise.”
Claire laughed again, but this time there was no humor in it.
“My mother made you promise not to tell me she asked whether you could stop loving my daughter, and that seemed reasonable?”
“No.”
“Apparently it seemed reasonable enough.”
“She said she was trying to put things in order.”
“She said that about expired coupons.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I knew her too, Claire.”
“Not like I did.”
Daniel’s jaw tightened.
“No, I knew the version who sometimes said things to me because she knew you’d turn everything into a fight.”
The sentence landed cleanly.
Claire stepped back.
Daniel looked as if he wanted to retrieve it.
He could not.
“Good,” she said.
“Claire—”
“No, that’s useful.”
“I shouldn’t have said it like that.”
“How should you have said it?”
He looked exhausted now.
“She was afraid of you finding something out.”
“What?”
“She never told me.”
“Did you ask?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“She said if she told me, I’d have to choose between protecting you and protecting Lucy.”
Claire stared at him.
“And you decided not knowing meant you didn’t have to choose.”
His silence answered.
Upstairs, something fell with a crash.
Both of them moved at once.
Claire reached the stairs first.
“Lucy?”
“I’m okay!”
They found her kneeling beside her dresser with the bottom drawer pulled completely free and pajamas scattered across the carpet.
Clementine lay on her side beneath a purple shirt.
Lucy looked up defensively.
“It came out.”
Daniel crouched and checked her hands.
“Did it hit you?”
“No.”
“Feet?”
“No.”
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
Claire stood in the doorway trying to make her breathing normal.
Lucy looked from Daniel to her.
“Are you fighting?”
Daniel started to answer.
Claire said, “A little.”
Lucy frowned.
“About me?”
The question struck with such accuracy that Claire had to grip the doorframe.
Daniel said immediately, “No.”
Claire heard the lie and hated him for it, then hated herself because it was exactly the lie Lucy needed.
“We’re dealing with some old family paperwork,” Claire said.
“That sounds boring.”
“It is incredibly boring.”
Lucy considered them.
“Dad looks mad.”
“I’m not mad at you,” Daniel said.
“I didn’t say at me.”
He gave her a tired smile.
“Right.”
Lucy pushed the pajamas with her toes.
“Can I wear the unicorn ones?”
“They’re too small,” Claire said.
“They still fit.”
“Your ankles disagree.”
“I don’t care what my ankles think.”
May you like
Daniel snorted despite himself.
For three seconds the room returned to something Claire recognized.
