Chương 10
“Try again.”
“I want to ask something.”
“What?”
“If I tell you, then I don’t need to ask him.”
Ryan sat on the floor.
“That’s fair.”
Emily closed the book.
“Will you be there?”
“Yes.”
“Grandma?”
“If you want.”
“No.”
“Grace?”
Emily thought.
“She’s funny.”
“She’ll be thrilled you finally recognized her professional value.”
Emily frowned.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
The meeting happened at a diner because Ryan refused Linda’s house and Emily refused Derek’s apartment.
Grace came.
She ordered pie.
“It’s ten in the morning,” Ryan said.
“The republic survives.”
Derek arrived five minutes early.
Ryan noticed.
He hated himself for noticing.
Derek wore a gray sweater and jeans. No alcohol. No expensive apology gift. No flowers. No toy.
He sat across from Emily.
“Hi.”
“Hi.”
Then nobody spoke.
Grace ate pie.
Ryan wondered whether he was supposed to facilitate.
He decided not to.
Emily looked at Derek.
“Did Dad like you?”
Derek’s expression changed.
He glanced at Ryan.
Ryan gave him nothing.
Derek looked back at Emily.
“Sometimes.”
Emily frowned.
“That’s weird.”
“Yeah.”
“Did he love you?”
Derek swallowed.
“Yes.”
“Did you love him?”
“Yes.”
“Then why were you mean about him?”
Derek looked down.
“Because loving somebody doesn’t always make you nice.”
Emily considered.
“That’s dumb too.”
“It is.”
“You say things are dumb a lot.”
“I do.”
“Dad did too.”
Derek smiled.
“So I’ve been told.”
Emily’s foot swung beneath the booth.
She looked at the table.
“Did you mean it?”
“What?”
“When you said my horse was junk.”
Derek did not answer immediately.
Ryan appreciated the pause.
“No.”
Emily looked up.
Derek said, “I wanted it to be junk because I was angry at what it meant.”
“What did it mean?”
Derek rubbed one thumb against the other.
“That your dad could still ask something from me even after he was gone.”
Emily stared at him.
“I don’t get it.”
“Good.”
Ryan almost smiled.
Derek continued.
“It’s an adult problem. Not yours.”
Emily accepted that more easily than Ryan expected.
Then she asked, “Do you hate me?”
Derek’s face collapsed inward.
Not dramatically.
His eyes simply lost their defense.
“No.”
Emily watched him.
“No,” he said again. “I don’t hate you.”
“Do you like me?”
Derek hesitated.
Ryan almost kicked him under the table.
Derek said, “I don’t know you very well.”
Emily looked surprised.
Grace stopped eating.
Derek continued.
“But I want to.”
Emily thought about that.
Then she nodded.
“That’s okay.”
Ryan looked at Derek.
For the first time, Derek had not said the easiest thing.
It mattered.
Not enough.
But it mattered.
They stayed forty-three minutes.
Ryan knew because he checked the time twice.
Derek did not touch Emily.
He did not ask her to forgive him.
He did not mention Noah again unless she did.
When the check arrived, Derek reached for it.
Ryan put his hand on it.
Derek looked at him.
“Seriously?”
“Separate checks.”
Grace groaned.
“You’re both exhausting.”
They split the check.
Outside, Emily stood beside Ryan.
Derek put his hands in his coat pockets.
“Can I see you again sometime?”
Emily looked at Ryan.
He hated that she looked at him.
He wanted her to know she was allowed to answer.
“You decide,” he said.
Emily turned back to Derek.
“Maybe.”
Derek nodded.
“Okay.”
As they walked to the truck, Emily slipped her hand into Ryan’s.
He felt relief.
Then shame about the relief.
Grace had been right.
He hated that most of all.
Spring arrived without ceremony.
The rocking horse returned to Emily’s room.
She rode it only twice because she had nearly outgrown it.
Mostly it sat beside her bookshelf.
The repaired leg held.
Derek saw Emily four more times.
Once at the diner.
Once at a park.
Once at Linda’s birthday lunch.
Once when Emily invited him, cautiously, to her school science fair because her project involved a potato battery and she had apparently decided electrical vegetables were an appropriate test of character.
Derek came.
He arrived early.
He stayed through the entire thing.
He did not understand the potato battery.
Neither did Ryan.
They both lied badly.
Emily caught them.
“You don’t know what voltage is,” she accused Derek.
“I know the word.”
“That’s not the same.”
“No.”
Ryan said, “I know what voltage is.”
Emily looked at him.
“Explain it.”
Ryan stared at the potato.
Derek smiled.
“Go ahead, Batteries.”
Ryan hated him a little.
It felt surprisingly normal.
There were setbacks.
Derek canceled one lunch because he had a bad week and wanted to stay home.
Ryan assumed he was disappearing again.
He sent an angry text.
Derek called.
“I told you I can’t come.”
“That’s what disappearing starts as.”
“I gave you three days’ notice.”
“You made a promise.”
“Promises don’t mean I never get sick or tired or screwed up.”
Ryan stood in his office stairwell, furious.
“You don’t get to be unreliable with her.”
“I’m not being unreliable. I’m rescheduling.”
“You don’t know the difference.”
Derek went silent.
Then he said, “You really need me to fail, don’t you?”
Ryan stopped.
The sentence was unfair.
It was also not entirely wrong.
Derek continued.
“If I screw up, you get to be Noah’s right choice forever.”
Ryan’s grip tightened around the phone.
“Don’t use him.”
“You use him every time you look at me.”
Ryan disconnected.
He regretted it ten minutes later.
He apologized the next day.
Not elegantly.
Derek accepted badly.
They rescheduled lunch.
Nobody grew overnight.
Linda continued her own slower repair.
She stopped arranging accidental meetings.
She asked before inviting Derek anywhere Emily would be.
The first time she did it, Ryan almost thanked her.
Then he decided not to reward a sixty-three-year-old woman for respecting basic boundaries.
Grace told him that was petty.
He agreed.
In May, Emily asked whether Derek could come to her dance recital.
Ryan said yes.
Linda cried before the recital started.
Emily was not onstage yet.
Ryan handed her a tissue.
“You’re embarrassing.”
“I’m a grandmother.”
May you like
“That isn’t a diagnosis.”
Grace, sitting on Linda’s other side, whispered, “Could be.”
