Chương 2
“I lost my temper.”
Lily made a small sound behind him.
Claire heard it.
“So you've never lost your temper?”
Daniel's hands curled.
He forced them open.
“I've yelled.”
“You've punched a wall.”
“Eight years ago.”
“Oh, so there's a statute of limitations on your mistakes?”
“That was before Lily was born, and I spent three months talking to someone because it scared me.”
Claire looked away.
Daniel regretted the words as soon as he said them, not because they were false, but because the argument had begun to drift toward the familiar territory where two adults could injure each other for hours and call it communication.
The children were still standing beside a shed they had just been locked inside.
He crouched again.
“Lily, did she hurt you?”
Lily looked at Claire before answering.
Daniel noticed.
That glance went through him.
“My arm.”
“Show me.”
Lily hesitated, then turned her left arm.
There was a reddish mark above her elbow where fingers might have gripped her.
Daniel did not touch it.
“Does it hurt?”
“A little.”
Noah wiped his nose with the back of his hand.
“She pushed Lily.”
Claire stepped forward.
“I was trying to get them away from the pool.”
Daniel stood.
“The pool?”
“They were running around after I told them to stop.”
“There isn't any water in it.”
The backyard pool had been drained two days earlier because a contractor was repairing cracked tile near the shallow-end steps.
Claire's mouth tightened.
“That doesn't make concrete safe.”
“No.”
“Exactly.”
“That explains getting them away from it.”
“I was trying to discipline them.”
“That doesn't explain the shed.”
“They were screaming.”
Noah whispered, “You were screaming.”
Claire looked at him.
The boy instantly hid behind Lily.
Daniel moved before thinking, putting another foot of distance between Claire and the children.
She saw it.
Something in her face collapsed.
Not remorse exactly.
Humiliation.
“You think I'm going to hit him?”
“I don't know what you're going to do.”
“You're my husband.”
“Right now I'm their father.”
The words hung between them.
Claire blinked several times.
Then she gave a short, disbelieving laugh.
“So that's it.”
Daniel hated that part of himself recognized the laugh.
It was the one she used when she felt cornered and wanted to make the other person feel foolish for having cornered her.
“What happened before I got here?”
“I told you.”
“No, you gave me pieces.”
“I had a terrible morning.”
Daniel waited.
Claire looked toward the house again.
“The contractor called.”
“What contractor?”
“The kitchen people.”
“We haven't hired kitchen people.”
“I was getting an estimate.”
“For what?”
She shut her eyes briefly.
Behind him, Lily shifted her bare feet on the grass.
Noah had begun rubbing the edge of Lily's dress between two fingers, a nervous habit Daniel had seen him use with blankets.
Daniel glanced at the children and felt ashamed that he was interrogating Claire in front of them.
“Inside,” he said.
Claire stiffened.
“Daniel—”
“Not you.”
Her face changed.
He pointed toward the patio table.
“Sit there.”
“You don't order me around.”
“No, I don't.”
His voice remained quiet.
“But you're not going into that house with them until I understand what happened.”
For several seconds, nobody moved.
Then Claire walked toward the patio table.
She sat with her back very straight and placed both hands in her lap.
It was such a controlled gesture that Daniel found it more disturbing than her anger.
He led the children inside.
The scattered contents of his briefcase remained across the floor.
Noah stopped beside them.
“Your computer fell out.”
“I see that.”
“Is it broken?”
“I don't care.”
Noah stared at him.
Daniel immediately wished he had answered differently.
“I mean, I can replace a computer.”
He touched Noah's hair.
“I can't replace you.”
Noah's lower lip trembled again.
Lily reached for him before Daniel could.
That, too, Daniel noticed.
He had always been proud of how protective Lily was of her brother.
Now he wondered when protection had stopped being a sweet older-sister instinct and become a job she believed she had to perform.
He gathered both children against him in the bright, immaculate room while Claire sat alone beyond the glass.
For the first time, Daniel wondered what happened in his house on the days nobody expected him home.
Daniel sat with Lily and Noah on the long cream-colored sofa and kept one arm around each of them until Noah's breathing stopped hitching.
Through the glass, Claire remained at the patio table.
She had not moved except to cross one leg over the other.
The distance between them was less than thirty feet, but Daniel had the strange sensation that she was sitting on the far side of something much larger than the lawn.
Lily leaned against his shoulder.
Noah had curled into her side again.
Daniel looked down at his daughter.
“What happened this morning?”
Lily stared at her bare feet.
“Mom was mad.”
“At you?”
She shrugged.
“At everybody.”
Noah whispered, “She broke a cup.”
Daniel glanced toward the kitchen.
One of the stools had been pushed away from the island.
A dish towel lay crumpled beside the sink.
He had noticed neither when he came in.
“Did she throw it?”
Lily shook her head.
“It fell.”
“Because she dropped it?”
“I don't know.”
Her eyes flicked toward the glass.
Daniel followed them.
Claire was watching.
He shifted slightly so his body blocked the children from her view.
“Lily, you don't have to protect anybody right now.”
Her mouth tightened.
It was too adult an expression on a seven-year-old face.
“I wasn't.”
“Okay.”
He let the silence sit.
Noah slid his hand under Daniel's jacket and held the fabric at his waist.
Daniel rested a palm against the boy's back.
“What did Mom say before she took you outside?”
Lily picked at a loose thread near the hem of her dress.
“She said we were making everything worse.”
“What was everything?”
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“I don't know.”
“Did she say?”
