Chương 13
“You said it tastes burned.”
Daniel smiled.
Rachel said, “I’ll suffer.”
Emma considered.
“Okay.”
Rachel crossed the street.
She sat beside the window.
For the first twenty minutes, she watched the bookstore entrance.
Then she made herself stop.
She opened a book.
Read one page.
Two.
At forty minutes, her phone buzzed.
Daniel.
Her heart jumped.
She answered immediately.
“What happened?”
“Nothing.”
“Why are you calling?”
“Emma wants to ask you something.”
The phone moved.
Emma said, “Can we stay fifteen more minutes?”
Rachel looked through the window.
She could see Daniel inside the bookstore now, standing several feet away, holding two paper cups.
He was not listening over Emma’s shoulder.
Rachel closed her eyes.
“Yes.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, bye.”
The call ended.
Rachel laughed.
She sat back.
Her coffee did taste burned.
Across the street, Emma took her hot chocolate from Daniel and began talking with both hands.
Rachel could not hear her.
She did not need to.
At fifty-three minutes, Daniel opened the bookstore door for a woman pushing a stroller.
At fifty-seven, Emma showed him something in a book.
At sixty-three, Rachel noticed she had stopped counting.
That felt dangerous.
It also felt necessary.
The divorce became final shortly before Emma turned eight.
There was no triumphant courthouse walk.
No photograph.
No champagne.
Rachel and Lena sat on a bench while waiting for a clerk to correct a middle initial on one document.
Rachel bought a stale granola bar from a vending machine.
“This is anticlimactic,” she said.
Lena looked at her.
“Would you like me to arrange thunder?”
Rachel laughed.
“No.”
“Good. Weather isn’t included in my retainer.”
When it was done, Rachel stood outside the courthouse and called her mother.
Margaret cried.
Rachel did not.
Nick texted a champagne emoji.
Rachel sent back: absolutely not.
Then she took the subway home because traffic was terrible.
At school pickup, Emma ran toward her holding a paper volcano.
“It exploded.”
“Academically?”
“For real.”
“Excellent.”
“Ms. Torres said not excellent.”
“Then I defer to Ms. Torres.”
Emma handed her the volcano.
Rachel carried it home.
That evening, Daniel came by for dinner.
Not because they had reconciled.
They had not.
He had moved to Brooklyn and started consulting for smaller real-estate firms. He earned less money. He complained about his apartment kitchen. He wore his father’s silver watch again.
The first time Rachel saw it, she had stared.
He noticed.
“I stopped wearing it because it reminded me of him.”
“Your dad?”
“Yes.”
“And now?”
“It reminds me of him.”
Rachel had waited for the explanation.
Daniel shrugged.
“That’s the point.”
She understood enough not to ask.
Dinner was Emma’s request.
Her class had a family-history project.
She needed both parents to help make a timeline.
Rachel nearly laughed when she saw the assignment.
A timeline.
As if families obeyed straight lines.
Daniel arrived with pizza.
Emma spread photographs across the table.
“This is when I was born.”
Daniel said, “You were very loud.”
“I was a baby.”
“You were exceptionally loud.”
Rachel said, “You cried more than she did.”
“I did not.”
“You absolutely did.”
Emma looked delighted.
“Daddy cried?”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Your mother had medication.”
“I had an epidural, not amnesia.”
Emma wrote DADDY CRIED under the photograph.
Daniel sighed.
“Great.”
They found a picture from Emma’s third birthday.
One from kindergarten.
One from a trip to Maine.
Then Emma picked up a photograph of the rooftop.
Rachel’s stomach tightened.
It was not from the night of the party.
It had been taken the previous summer.
Emma stood beside the infinity pool wearing inflatable arm bands and holding Daniel’s hand.
“Can I use this?”
Daniel stopped.
Rachel looked at Emma.
“For the project?”
“Yes.”
“What year?”
“Last year.”
“You can use another picture.”
“I like this one.”
Daniel said nothing.
Rachel waited for herself to object.
She did not.
“Okay.”
Emma taped it onto the poster.
The pool became part of the timeline without becoming the whole timeline.
Rachel thought about that later.
After dinner, Daniel washed dishes.
He had always been terrible at washing dishes.
He used too much soap.
Rachel leaned against the counter.
“You know you don’t need half the bottle.”
“I’m cleaning.”
“You’re laundering money through Dawn.”
He looked at the foam.
“That does seem excessive.”
Emma shouted from her bedroom.
“Mom!”
Rachel turned.
Then Daniel said, “I’ve got it.”
He stopped himself.
Looked at her.
Rachel waited.
The old version of him would have assumed.
The frightened version would have asked permission for everything.
This version simply said, “Can I?”
Rachel nodded.
He went down the hall.
She stood alone beside the sink.
A few minutes later she heard Emma laughing.
Then Daniel’s voice.
Then silence.
Then Emma complaining that he was reading the story wrong.
Ordinary sounds.
Rachel dried a plate.
For a long time she had believed healing would feel like certainty.
It did not.
It felt like standing in a kitchen while the man who had once destroyed her trust read badly to their daughter in the next room, and knowing she could walk down the hall if she needed to, and knowing she did not need to yet.
The next summer, Emma asked to swim.
She was eight and three quarters.
They were at Rachel’s mother’s house in Westchester.
The pool was small, rectangular, ordinary.
No glass walls.
No skyline.
No cabana.
Emma stood on the first step in a blue swimsuit.
Rachel sat on the edge with her feet in the water.
“You don’t have to.”
“I know.”
“We can stop.”
“I know.”
“You can just stand there.”
“Mom.”
“What?”
“You’re talking a lot.”
Rachel closed her mouth.
Emma smiled.
She took another step.
Water reached her knees.
Then her waist.
She stopped.
Rachel’s entire body tightened.
Emma looked at her.
“Don’t make that face.”
“What face?”
“The weird face.”
“I have no idea what you mean.”
“You do.”
Emma took another step.
The water reached her chest.
Rachel wanted to stand.
May you like
She did not.
Emma put both hands on the surface.
