Chương 5
"I should have been there."
I did not answer.
Because he was right.
And because I had spent eight years carrying the consequences of that truth.
The next morning, I woke up earlier than everyone else.
Old habit.
Motherhood had trained my body to wake before alarms.
I walked into the kitchen and found Marcus already there.
He looked like he had not slept.
A coffee mug sat untouched in front of him.
"You always did that," I said.
He looked up.
"What?"
"Made coffee and forgot to drink it when you were stressed."
A small smile appeared.
It disappeared quickly.
"I remember other things too."
I stood across the kitchen from him.
"Do you?"
He looked down.
"I remember the first time we met."
I said nothing.
"At the bookstore."
I remembered.
He had knocked over an entire display of notebooks because he was trying to reach a book on the top shelf.
He had apologized to the employee six times.
The employee had eventually told him to stop apologizing.
"You laughed at me," he said.
"You looked ridiculous."
"I did."
The quiet memory almost felt like another lifetime.
Then he ruined it himself.
"I wish I had known."
I looked at him.
"Known what?"
"That they were real."
The sentence bothered me.
Not because it was cruel.
Because it revealed something he still did not understand.
"They were real when I told you."
He looked away.
"I know."
"Do you?"
He did not answer.
A few minutes later, the children entered the kitchen, ending the conversation before either of us could say something we were not ready to say.
Noah walked directly to Marcus.
Not cautiously.
Not afraid.
Just curious.
"Are you coming with us today?"
Marcus froze.
I saw the question hit him harder than any accusation.
Because it was not asking whether he deserved another chance.
It was asking whether he would leave again.
Because it was not asking for an apology, I knew Noah was asking for proof.
Children did not understand promises the way adults did.
They understood patterns.
They understood who showed up.
They understood who disappeared.
Marcus stared at him for several seconds.
Then he looked at me.
I did not rescue him.
That was one thing I had learned.
I could not keep protecting him from the consequences of his own choices.
"I'd like to," Marcus said.
Noah nodded.
"Okay."
That was all.
No dramatic forgiveness.
No emotional reunion.
Just a child accepting an answer while quietly deciding what it meant.
The simplicity of it seemed to hurt Marcus more than anger would have.
We spent the morning at a small park near Patricia's house.
It had been one of the places she took her own children when they were young.
The snow had been cleared from the walking paths, but patches of white remained around the trees.
My children ran ahead.
Not far.
Never far.
I had spent eight years teaching them awareness without making them afraid of the world.
Marcus walked beside me.
For a while, neither of us spoke.
The silence was different from the ones we shared before.
The old silence had been filled with things we refused to say.
This one was filled with things we did not know how to say.
"Are they happy?" he asked.
I looked at him.
"What kind of question is that?"
"I don't know."
He shoved his hands into his coat pockets.
"I guess I mean..."
He stopped.
That happened more often than I remembered.
Marcus had always been confident when he knew the answer.
When he did not, he became someone else.
"They're good kids," I said.
"I can see that."
"No."
I stopped walking.
He looked at me.
"You see them for a few hours."
His expression tightened.
"I know."
"You don't know their mornings."
I pointed toward Noah, who was helping Ethan build something out of fallen branches.
"You don't know that Noah gets quiet when he is worried because he thinks being upset makes things harder for everyone else."
Marcus followed my gaze.
"You don't know Ethan pretends he isn't hurt when things bother him because he thinks fixing problems is the same as fixing feelings."
Marcus looked toward the girls.
"You don't know Sophia asks questions when she is scared."
My voice became softer.
"And you don't know Olivia notices every emotion in a room before anyone says anything."
He listened.
He did not interrupt.
That was new.
"Those are the things you missed," I said.
He nodded slowly.
"I missed everything."
The admission sat between us.
Not enough to erase anything.
But enough to matter.
A dog ran past us with a stick in its mouth, followed by a man apologizing to everyone it approached.
The ordinary interruption almost felt strange.
A family dealing with a life-changing moment while a stranger chased a happy dog through the snow.
That was how life worked.
Important things happened while normal things continued.
Later that afternoon, Claire asked to speak with me privately.
She found me in the guest room where I was folding the children's clothes.
It was an ordinary task.
The kind of thing that had filled thousands of my days.
"You don't have to stop," she said.
I looked up.
"I'm not asking you to leave."
I placed a sweater on the bed.
"Okay."
She hesitated.
That hesitation told me she was choosing her words carefully.
"I need you to know something."
I waited.
"I am not angry that he has children."
Her voice was quiet.
"I am angry that I didn't know."
That made sense.
"I believe you."
She looked relieved and uncomfortable at the same time.
"Do you hate me?"
The question surprised me.
"No."
"Why not?"
I folded another shirt.
"Because you didn't leave."
Her eyes moved away.
That answer affected her.
Maybe because she had been expecting me to make her carry some of Marcus's guilt.
"I should have noticed something was wrong," she said.
May you like
I looked at her.
"What do you mean?"
