Chương 3
Kevin stared at her.
She glanced back.
"He was hungry."
A laugh escaped him before he could stop it.
He covered his mouth.
The laugh broke in the middle and became something else.
He turned his face away.
Annie pretended not to notice.
That was the second mercy.
Kevin stood near the doorway with one hand against his mouth until he trusted himself to breathe normally.
When he finally looked back, Annie was adjusting the quilt between the boys.
"What else?"
"I told him his mother didn't leave because of anything he or Noah did."
Kevin's wet eyes lifted to hers.
"Did he believe you?"
"No."
The answer hurt more because it was honest.
Annie lowered her voice.
"But he listened."
Kevin nodded without meaning to.
Oliver moved in his sleep.
His lips parted.
"Dad?"
Kevin was across the room before he had time to think.
He crouched beside the bed.
"I'm here."
Oliver's eyes never opened.
His fingers emerged from beneath the quilt and moved blindly across the mattress.
Kevin offered his hand.
The boy caught two of his fingers.
"Don't go downstairs."
Kevin looked at Annie.
She had stepped back.
Her face remained composed, but her eyes had changed.
Kevin turned to his son.
"I have work."
Oliver's fingers tightened.
It would have been easy to lie.
Five more minutes.
I'm not going anywhere.
Kevin had used all three before.
He looked at the small hand wrapped around his fingers.
"The work can wait."
Oliver's grip loosened almost immediately.
Within seconds, his breathing deepened.
Kevin stayed crouched.
His knees began to ache.
He did not move.
Annie walked quietly toward the door.
"Annie."
She stopped.
Kevin kept his eyes on Oliver.
"Next Friday."
"Yes."
"Don't make plans yet."
A pause followed.
"I have plans."
Of course she did.
Kevin almost smiled at the arrogance of his own assumption.
"What plans?"
"That's not really your business."
He looked over his shoulder.
Annie stood beneath the doorway, warm light catching the white edge of her cap.
"No," he said.
"It isn't."
She waited as though expecting him to continue.
Kevin looked at Claire's portrait, then at his sleeping sons.
For once, he resisted the urge to solve the problem with money before understanding what the problem was.
"Tomorrow," he said quietly.
"Could we talk?"
Annie's expression softened, though only slightly.
"After breakfast."
Kevin nodded.
"After breakfast."
She left the room without another word.
Kevin remained beside the bed with Oliver holding his fingers and Noah breathing softly against his brother.
The house settled around them, enormous and expensive and, for the first time in months, not entirely empty.
He looked once more at the woman in the gold frame.
Then he pulled the chair closer to the bed, sat down, and stayed.
He stayed until the pins and needles in his left foot became sharp enough to make him shift in the chair.
Oliver's hand slipped from his fingers but did not wake.
Kevin watched the small hand fall open against the quilt, palm up, vulnerable in a way children never seemed to notice about themselves.
He lowered his own hand slowly.
The room was darker now except for the bedside lamp and the muted glow slipping around the curtains from the grounds outside.
He should have gone downstairs.
There were emails waiting, a contract his attorney had marked urgent, and three missed calls from Martin Keene, who had worked beside him for twelve years and had recently developed the infuriating habit of asking whether Kevin was sleeping enough.
Kevin had stopped answering that question.
He leaned back and heard the chair give a faint wooden complaint.
Noah stirred.
Kevin froze until the boy settled.
Then he looked toward the doorway Annie had passed through and wondered when exactly the people in his house had begun learning his children better than he did.
The thought was unfair.
He knew that immediately.
He had been there for fevers, nightmares, scraped knees, school pickups, the morning Noah refused to wear anything except one red rain boot and one sneaker.
He knew Oliver hated bananas unless they were sliced thin.
He knew Noah pretended to dislike bath bubbles because Oliver loved them.
He knew the difference between their cries even from another floor.
But grief had changed the arithmetic of fatherhood.
Knowing things about them was no longer the same as reaching them.
He rubbed both hands over his face.
Claire had been gone seven months and four days.
He had stopped counting at five months, then discovered that not counting required counting first.
The absurdity would have amused her.
A floorboard creaked in the hall.
Kevin looked up.
Mrs. Bell stood just beyond the doorway in a gray cardigan over her uniform, her silver hair pinned back with the kind of efficiency she brought to everything.
She glanced at the sleeping boys and then at Kevin in the chair.
Her eyebrows rose.
Kevin lifted one finger to his lips.
Mrs. Bell's expression suggested that she had spent thirty years not needing instructions on silence in bedrooms.
She stepped back into the hall.
Kevin waited a moment, then eased himself from the chair.
Oliver shifted but did not wake.
Kevin walked to the doorway and pulled it nearly closed behind him.
Mrs. Bell had moved ten feet down the corridor.
"You wanted something?"
"I was checking the linen cupboard."
"At nine-thirty?"
"It remains a linen cupboard after nine-thirty."
Kevin looked at her.
She folded her arms.
"You heard."
"Enough."
"How much is enough?"
"Enough to know you owe Miss Foster a better conversation than the one you nearly had."
Kevin exhaled through his nose.
"You're remarkably opinionated for someone who was checking towels."
"Sheets."
"Of course."
Mrs. Bell glanced toward the bedroom.
"They slept?"
"They're asleep."
"That wasn't the question."
Kevin disliked the distinction because it was accurate.
"Yes."
Her face softened briefly.
Then practical severity returned.
"You need to decide what you're doing about Friday."
May you like
"Annie said you contacted the agency."
"I did."
