Chương 8
Rachel stood alone in the kitchen.
“Did everyone know except me?”
“No.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“People suspected.”
“Who?”
“I’m not giving you a list.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m not turning your marriage into some corporate deposition.”
“My marriage is already a deposition.”
He sighed.
“Daniel got careless.”
“Not last night.”
“Before that.”
“How?”
“Lunches. Travel schedules. Claire started showing up at things she had no business being at.”
“And you said nothing.”
“What exactly was I supposed to say?”
Rachel laughed.
“Maybe, ‘Your husband is sleeping with someone.’”
“You and I aren’t friends.”
“We’ve had Thanksgiving together.”
“Twice.”
“Right. Practically strangers.”
“Rachel, I’m not defending myself well.”
“No.”
“I didn’t want to be involved.”
“You weren’t.”
“That’s fair.”
She looked at the cereal bowl still in the sink.
“Did he ever talk about leaving me?”
Seth took too long.
Rachel sat down.
“He did.”
“When?”
“A month ago.”
“What did he say?”
“That things were bad at home.”
Rachel almost smiled.
Things were not bad at home a month ago.
Things were quiet.
She had been repainting Emma’s room. Daniel had helped assemble a bookshelf badly. They had watched half a documentary and fallen asleep on the couch.
That was apparently bad.
“He said you two had become more like co-parents.”
“We had sex that week.”
Seth made a strangled sound.
“Rachel, Jesus.”
“You seemed concerned about accuracy.”
“Okay.”
She rubbed her forehead.
“What did you tell him?”
“To figure out what he wanted before he blew up his life.”
“And did he?”
“I don’t think Daniel has ever figured out what he wants. He figures out what he can keep.”
Rachel stopped.
That sounded true enough to hurt.
After they hung up, she left the cereal bowl in the sink.
For two days, Emma would not take a bath.
She stood in the bathroom doorway in dinosaur pajamas and shook her head.
“I don’t want water.”
Rachel crouched.
“We can do a shower.”
“No.”
“A sponge bath?”
“No.”
“You are getting a little stinky.”
Emma sniffed her own shoulder.
“I’m fine.”
Rachel sat on the tile floor.
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Okay.”
“You said I had to.”
“I changed my mind.”
Emma looked suspicious.
Rachel leaned back against the tub.
“You can be stinky one more day.”
Emma sat beside her.
They stayed there for almost ten minutes.
Neither talked about the pool.
Emma told her that a girl in first grade ate glue once.
Rachel said she hoped it was accidental.
Emma said it was not.
The next evening, Emma agreed to stand in the shower with no water running while Rachel washed her with a warm cloth.
Three days later, she allowed water to touch her feet.
The therapist they found specialized in childhood trauma and advised Rachel not to force progress.
Daniel hated that advice.
Rachel knew because he sent eleven texts about it.
He had moved into a hotel.
By the fourth day, attorneys were involved.
Rachel had never before understood how quickly a marriage could become a series of PDFs.
Temporary parenting arrangements.
Financial disclosures.
Apartment access.
School pickup authorization.
Media requests.
Statements to police.
Statements not to media.
Instructions about preserving messages.
Instructions about not discussing the case with potential witnesses.
Her divorce attorney, Lena Park, was forty-two and spoke in a voice so calm it sometimes made Rachel want to throw things.
“Do not negotiate with Daniel directly.”
“He’s Emma’s father.”
“You can discuss immediate child-related logistics.”
“He wants to see her.”
“That’s not a logistics question.”
“She asks about him.”
“That matters.”
“Then what do I do?”
Lena looked at her across a conference table.
“You separate what Emma needs from what Daniel wants and from what you feel.”
Rachel stared.
“That sounds very clean.”
“It won’t be.”
“Good.”
Lena almost smiled.
“Your brother told me you dislike reassuring people.”
“My brother talks too much.”
“He also told me to make sure Daniel never gets within five hundred feet of Emma.”
“That is why my brother is not my lawyer.”
Lena folded her hands.
“What do you want?”
“A divorce.”
“That part is straightforward.”
“Nothing about this is straightforward.”
“I said that part.”
Rachel looked out at Park Avenue traffic below.
“I don’t know about Emma.”
“You don’t know whether you want him to see her.”
“No.”
“That’s reasonable.”
“It doesn’t feel reasonable.”
“Most reasonable things in family law feel terrible.”
Rachel turned back.
“Can I ask for supervised visits?”
“You can ask.”
“Will I get them?”
“We can make the case.”
“Because of the pool?”
“Yes, and because there’s an active investigation, and because Emma is showing fear related to him.”
“She also misses him.”
“Those facts can coexist.”
Rachel hated coexistence.
She wanted one fact to kill another.
Daniel endangered Emma.
Therefore Emma should stop loving him.
Daniel betrayed Rachel.
Therefore Rachel should stop remembering every decent thing he had ever done.
The mind refused.
It preserved inconvenient evidence.
Daniel asleep on the floor beside Emma’s crib when she had pneumonia at eight months.
Daniel learning to braid hair from YouTube.
Daniel crying in the hospital parking lot after Rachel miscarried at eleven weeks, because he had not wanted her to see him cry.
Daniel teaching Emma to make pancakes shaped like letters.
Daniel shutting a glass door in his daughter’s face.
All true.
No equation solved them.
Claire contacted Rachel on the sixth day.
Not directly.
Through an attorney.
The email was brief.
Ms. Morgan would like to provide information concerning the events of September 12 and requests that communication occur through counsel.
Rachel forwarded it to Lena.
Then she stood in the kitchen and said, “Coward.”
Margaret, who was making soup, said, “Who?”
“Claire.”
“Accurate.”
“You don’t even know what happened.”
“I know enough.”
“That’s the problem with everyone.”
Margaret put down the knife.
“What does that mean?”
“It means everyone knows enough.”
May you like
“Rachel.”
“No, really. The internet knows enough. Daniel’s company knows enough. Nick knows enough to punch somebody. You know enough to hate a woman you’ve never met.”
